Castings: August 21, 2026

Messy and Complicated

Who do you say that I am?

Peter sees it and is bold enough to say it out loud: You are the messiah, the Son of the Living God. It’s neither the first nor the last time Peter will get it exactly right. And yet, you can’t tell the story of Peter without talking about all the places he got it totally wrong, chief among them, denying Jesus three times.

This is the messiness that God works with. Human beings are nothing if not messy and complicated. Like Peter, we strive to seek the good, to understand. Like Peter sometimes we are able to see and comprehend God dwelling in our midst. And other times, we just flat out miss the mark. We deny God, we hear the cock crow, we weep at our own brokenness.

God does not call us to perfection. God calls us to faithfulness. We will mess up. We will sin. We will sometimes miss what God is trying to reveal to us. But some days, like Peter in the district of Caesarea Philippi, we will see exactly who God is and know God’s astounding presence with us.