蜜芽传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Daniel Sibthorpe

Good morning

Sympathy for the Devil is the opening track on the Rolling Stones 1968 album Beggar鈥檚 Banquet. It caused quite a stir at the time, and may still raise a few eyebrows.

Although I may disagree with the song title, I do feel sympathy for certain individuals in the bible who seem to have been unfairly labelled. If you look at baby name lists, Peter is still riding high at 360, whereas Judas is over 10 thousand places lower.

In my reading of the bible, they both did their fair share of betraying. Peter called down curses on himself, denying he had anything to do with Jesus. Judas gave crucial intelligence on where to find Jesus, but seems to have come off far worse in our collective memory.

Perhaps this is due to the later interaction between Jesus and Peter, which is detailed at the end of John's Gospel.

Jesus is having a beach barbecue and still instructing the disciples on how to catch fish. Peter jumps into the water to reach Him first, and in a profound act of reconciliation, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him, mirroring Peter's three denials.

Judas鈥檚 final moments reveal deep regret as he returns the silver pieces to the priests and declares that he has betrayed an innocent man.
This makes me wonder what the conversation would have been if Judas were present at that breakfast with Jesus.

Today, I pray that we may come to understand how immense God's love is for us; that nothing we have said or done can prevent us from being invited to a reconciling encounter with Him.

Amen

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