John 6:68-69
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Peter rhetorically poses the question, “to whom shall we go?” He is making a point, not exploring options. But so often the tug of our hearts is to find options. We read this question and our hearts go, “yeah, where else??” Where else might we look for hope and happiness and fulfillment? Or where else might we find the numbing stupefication we want to make this miserable world fade for a few hours.
So today, as you read these words and maybe recognize the frantic scrabbling of your heart for something to cling to, consider the rest of what Peter says: You have the words of eternal life. . . you are the Holy One of God. Jesus has life in his mouth and heart, and he has spoken it to us. Not only that, Jesus is the Word of eternal life (John 1:1-18). Nothing else we look to as “life giving”–no healthy habit, no vacation, no me time, no night out, no numbing habit, no relationship–will deliver what only Jesus can offer in his words of life.
He is the Holy One of God, yet he came down to live life as one of us, navigating the same chaos and difficulties and suffering and “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.(Heb. 4:15) So Jesus is the one who saves, the one who forgives, the one who rescues, the one who makes us right with God. So press your soul to consider again, to whom shall we go?
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe.
