What Are You Thinking?

It happens all the time. People say things and do things, but everything is misinterpreted. We have a way of jumping in, thinking we know what’s happening, only to find out we were wrong. Before we act, we think, and our thinking is muddled with many complications, often unexpected distortions. If only Peter had this understanding before he spoke.

In some post-anything world, we find so many roles have changed – some have switched roles with God, humanizing the latter and deifying the former. Indeed, we have human words to describe God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and as long as we know that our words can’t capture the uncapturable, we’re okay with that. But if we are the ones who see our fate in our own hands, and God is only obliging, would we be surprised that Christ’s invective language, “Get behind me, Satan,” is directed to us? And now we are an obstacle to him. We can’t carry on his word, commandments, or love when we are the god. Peter’s inopportune moment brought a strong rebuke, and we may ask Peter: What are you thinking? Perhaps his lapse in his retrospection caused him to forget what Jesus was all about – to die to save humankind.

Now, it would make us a world of good if we did not always think like the humans we are. Maybe then, no one has to shout to us, “What are you thinking!”

And it is a question we have to ask ourselves many times over—something to think about in the tranquil presence of God.

Prayer:

A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Cast me not out from your presence, and your Holy Spirit take not from me. (Psalm 51:12-13)