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, a journey of two days, and six fellow believers as witnesses to get Peter through the front door of a Gentile's house.
All of it is there on the page. Peter is on a rooftop in Joppa at noon, very hungry, when heaven lets down a great sheet full of animals he has never eaten, and a voice says, "Rise, Peter; kill, and eat." He refuses: "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean." Then the Bible adds, "This was done thrice." Right then there are men at the gate, and the Spirit tells him to go with them, "doubting nothing." He travels to Caesarea, walks into the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and says what everybody in the room already knows: "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." Then he speaks today's verse: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." In the Greek, "perceive" is in the present tense. Peter is working it out as he speaks, after a lifetime of keeping the rule he has just broken.
Put your own story beside his. Peter's wall had Scripture behind it, or he believed it did, and he had kept it at real cost. The person you would rather not have in your kitchen may be kept out by something far less respectable. That makes Peter's change the harder one, and yours all the more needed.
Paul gives the warning that belongs beside this story. Some years later, at Antioch, Peter was eating with Gentile believers "before that certain came from James." When they arrived, "he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision," and Paul writes, "I withstood him to the face." A conviction that came by a vision was set aside at a shared table because of who walked in. Seeing a truth once does not settle it for good. Yet the God who showed Peter the sheet three times was patient with him, and He is patient with you. Peter's sentence goes on: "in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." God welcomes you on those terms, and He will keep teaching you to welcome others.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 342 is Precious in His Sight (Isaiah 43:4).