Some of the hardest seasons of life are not the ones that knock us down all at once. They are the ones that simply do not go away.
You pray, but tomorrow morning the circumstances are still there. The relationship is still broken. The illness has not changed. The pressure has not lifted. What you hoped would be a difficult moment becomes something you have to keep living through.
Near the end of his letter, Peter says something surprising:
“What you are experiencing is truly part of God’s grace for you. Stand firm in this grace.”
— 1 Peter 5:12, NLT
We usually think of grace as what gets us out of trouble. Peter had learned about a grace that can hold us in the middle of it.
He learned it because he knew what it was to fall.
When Jesus asked Peter to stay awake in Gethsemane, Peter fell asleep. When the pressure came later that night, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. Yet before Peter failed, Jesus had already told him, “I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail.” Jesus was already praying for Peter’s recovery before Peter had fallen.
And after the resurrection, Jesus went looking for him.
Peter’s story is not the story of a man who became strong enough that he never fell again. It is the story of a man who discovered that Jesus was faithful even when his own strength failed him.
That changes the way we think about grace.
Sometimes grace is the answer we have been asking God for. Sometimes grace is relief. Sometimes circumstances change.
But sometimes the circumstances are still there, and so is Jesus.
Peter calls God “the God of all grace.” He speaks of “varied grace,” grace that comes in different forms for different circumstances. Then, almost at the end of everything he wants these Christians to hear, he says simply: “Stand firm in this grace.”
Maybe you cannot yet see what God is doing with what you are experiencing. Peter does not ask you to pretend it does not hurt. He does not ask you to call suffering pleasant.
He points you instead to the grace of Jesus.
The grace that stayed awake when Peter could not.
The grace that prayed for him before he fell.
The grace that found him after his failure.
The grace that put him back on his feet.
And perhaps that is worth remembering when tomorrow arrives and the hard thing is still there.
You do not have to know when it will end to know where you can stand.
Stand firm in this grace.
