From Mark 14:26-31 / Those (all-too RARE) times when I want to beat myself up over some failure, my blessed wife is wont to bring me back to reality with these words: “To be disappointed in yourself, is to have believed in yourself.” Sobering, and so true. We are a people who seem to be endlessly convinced we are so much better than we are. So much less marred by sin than we are. I do not point a finger at Peter and the rest here for thinking they will be brave and constant in the dark hours ahead. They (like me) underestimate their own weakness, and overestimate their own fidelity and courage. And yet here is our Redeemer – omnisciently aware of their real condition, and what He was about to suffer not just at the hands of His persecutors, but in the abandonment of His loved ones. And what does He do? He tells them irrespective of all, He WILL rise again. And that once He has, He will not have abandoned them even in the face of their cruelest denial of Him. But will go before them to Galilee, to see them again. The confidence of the Christian is not that we will remain so wonderfully faithful, but that because He is so amazingly faithful, we cannot be lost. He will never deny His own. We rest in Him. Not in ourselves, our performance, or any imagined vein of uprightness – just Him. Oh praise His glorious name!