And Peter

The little one wants the blue bowl and the blue bowl is in the sink from last night, and she is standing at the sink with a glass of water she has not drunk yet, and that is as far as the morning has got.

The kitchen is going on without her. Cereal is being poured badly by a seven year old. School bags are by the door where they were left. The radio is telling the weather. Nobody in this room knows about last night except her, and the not knowing is loud; her son is telling her about a dinosaur, and she is nodding, and behind the nodding is a room she cannot go into yet, because in that room it happened again, after all of it, and she can smell it on herself under the toothpaste.

Blue bowl, Mum. She washes it. Her hands know how. She dries it and puts cereal in it and the little one is satisfied and the day has already asked her for one thing and she has done it, and it does not feel like anything, because the sentence running under everything is I cannot face today. Not the school run. Not the emails. Today, the whole shape of it, the fact of it. She would give anything to have the day canceled and she cannot, because two children are eating in it.

You are the one at the sink. It happened again last night, whatever your again is, and you woke into a morning that feels like a courtroom, and the children, or the crew, or the ward, or the empty flat, are waiting for you to walk into it. I am not going to ask you what happened. I am not going to count anything. I am going to stand at the sink with you for the next hour, and I have one thing to say, and it is two words long.

You are named this morning and you were named before you woke, and the naming was done by an angel with instructions. Mark 16:7 says go, tell his disciples and Peter, and that is exactly what stands written, with the one man who most needed his own name given it; the Holy Spirit is the one who reads that clause out loud in a kitchen at seven in the morning.

And Peter

Let me start with what is true about this morning before I say anything about God, because the worst thing anyone can do to you at this sink is hurry you. Last night happened. You are frightened, and ashamed, and sick, and behind all of that is a tiredness so deep it does not have a bottom. And underneath the tiredness is a voice that says today is the sentence for last night, and you have to serve it. That voice sounds like justice. It is not. It is only very loud.

Now hear what the written word says over you, here, at the sink, and hear who carries it. You are named this morning, by name, by the God who saw last night, and He has not stood back from you by one step. I am not saying my own thought. On the first morning after the worst night in the history of the world, an angel sat in an empty tomb and told the women to go and tell His disciples, and then said two more words. And Peter. The Holy Spirit is the one who breathes those two words off the page and into a kitchen.

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.Mark 16:7

Peter had done the worst thing he could imagine doing, three times, by a fire, with a girl watching, and had gone out and wept, and had not slept, and had woken into a morning he could not face. And the message from the risen Lord did not say tell the disciples, and Peter can come if he sorts himself out. It did not say tell the disciples, and Peter starts again from the beginning. It said and Peter. By name. First morning. Before anything was fixed. You have that same and after your name this morning, and it is Scripture and not my sympathy that puts it there, and His Spirit is saying it over the sink.

Then, a while later, on a shore at first light, the risen Jesus stood by a fire He had built Himself, and there was bread on it and fish, and the first thing He said to the man who had denied Him was not a question about the night. It was come and have breakfast. That is John 21. He fed him first. The talking came after, and even the talking was not a trial. Hear it plainly: the first thing God does for a person the morning after is not review the night. It is put food in front of them.

Somewhere safe to stand for one hour

So here is what I have for you, and I want you to notice how small it is, because it is meant to fit into a morning that cannot hold anything else.

Eat something. Then drink the water in your hand. Then say one sentence to God, out loud, at the sink, with the children eating behind you. That is all. Not a plan for the day. Not a plan for the week. One hour, on food and water and one sentence, and the hour after that is His to hand you when it comes. You are not being asked to face today; you are being given the next hour, and it is written that His mercies are new every morning, so a morning is exactly the size of thing He hands out. The Holy Spirit is not waiting until tonight to see how you did. He is at the sink.

His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.Lamentations 3:22-23

I want to say the next part carefully, because it is about your body and I am not a doctor. If your hands are shaking this morning, if you are sweating, if your heart is going, if anything in your body feels wrong in a way it has not before, then find a doctor today, and do not try to manage that part alone. That is not a failure of faith. It is what a person does with a body. And if the morning has taken you somewhere darker than shame, if you have started thinking the children would be better off with a different mother, then tell one human being now, and if you are in danger reach the crisis line where you live and let a real voice stay on the line. Real help is God's help. A meeting, a counselor, the friend you are frightened to call, the doctor: those are the hands He uses, and you were never asked to choose between Him and them, because Scripture says He gives every good gift, and His Spirit works through people who pick up the phone.

And no counting. I know the count is running in your head, and I know what it did to you when it stopped, and I am not going to touch it. Nobody in heaven is holding a clipboard. Peter was not told how many days it had been. He was told his name, and then he was told to eat.