Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest.  Peter followed at a distance.  But when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.

A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight.  She looked closely at him and said,

“This man was with him.”

But he denied it.

“Woman, I don’t know him,” he said.

A little later someone else saw him and said,

“You also are one of them.”

“Man, I am not!” Peter replied.

About an hour later another asserted,

“Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.”

Peter replied,

“Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.

Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him:

“Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.”

And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Luke 22:54-62

The two betrayal scenes have struck me the past two mornings.  I don’t know when my reading of these changed from, “How could they do that to Him?!” to “I know put in the same situation I absolutely have the capacity of doing the same thing.”

Maybe it’s when you realize you do it all the time, every day but in different, seemingly smaller ways.

“Behold the Man upon a cross

My sin upon His shoulders

Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,

Call out among the scoffers…

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer

But this I know with all my heart

His wounds have paid my ransom”