Being Left Out

We sure do not like the feeling of being left out! I remember waiting for the first bell in high school and so wishing that I was in that popular group that I could see off to the side. (Oh, the lie of popularity's satisfaction!)

But speaking of being left out, there's Peter. He had just experienced a miraculous escape from prison. So he went to the house where the church was fervently praying for him. The servant girl, Rhoda, came to answer his knock at the gate and "when she recognized Peter's voice, because of her gladness she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate". She must have been gone a while because "they said to her, 'You are beside yourself!' Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, 'It is his angel.' (Acts 12:12-19)

Meanwhile, the focus of their prayer meeting is still outside the gate, knocking. Amazing! I got to wondering if Peter was getting a chance to remember another time he was left out. 

When Jesus had been arrested and bound, He was led to the high priest. The "other disciple" got to go in with Jesus. (John 18:15-18) "But Peter stood at the door outside. Then the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to her who kept the door, and brought Peter in." 

Sadly, this entrance resulted in Peter's first denial: "Then the servant girl who kept the door said to Peter, 'You are not also one of this Man's disciples, are you?' He said, 'I am not."'

However, back at Rhoda's gate "Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished". Peter was then able to tell them all of His amazing deliverance by His now precious Lord Jesus.

The postscript is also precious. Peter seems in a hurry and makes one request: "Go, tell these things to James and to the brethren." Here he is not talking about his old fishing buddy, James, who had recently been killed by Herod. He is talking about none other that Jesus' closest earthly brother (Matthew 13:55). Earlier this James had actually mocked Jesus in unbelief. (John 7:3-5). But now he has become a leader in the baby church.

How powerful and full of wonder is our Lord, who through His Holy Spirit has turned around denying Peter and doubting James into the first leaders of His body left on earth. And His body includes all of us believers. We need never to fear again being "left out".