Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 342 · December 8
Peter at Caesarea
“Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:”
It took a vision repeated three times, two days on the road and six witnesses to get Peter through that front door.
Every part of that is on the page. He is on a roof at noon, hungry, and heaven hands him a sheet of animals he has never eaten. Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. He refuses: Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. This was done thrice. Then men are at the gate, and the Spirit tells him to go with them doubting nothing. He walks to Caesarea, stands in a Gentile house, and says what the room knows about him: Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation. The famous sentence follows in the present tense. Of a truth I perceive. He is working it out on his feet as he speaks, in a stranger's front room, decades into a life of keeping the rule he has just broken.
Set your own version beside his and keep the difference visible. Peter's barrier had scripture behind it, or he believed it did, and he had kept it from childhood at some cost. The person you would rather not have in your kitchen is kept out by nothing so respectable, which makes his change the harder one.
A warning belongs beside it, and Paul is the one who supplies it. Years later, at Antioch, Peter was eating with Gentile believers until certain came from James, and then he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. Paul withstood him to the face over it. A conviction that arrived by vision and walked two days on foot was put down again at a shared table, because of who walked in. Perceiving it once does not settle it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 342 is Precious in His Sight (Isaiah 43:4).