Hey, everybody. This is Father John Ricardo with Acts 29. And in the middle of all the craziness

and the uncertainty that's going on right now, it seems from our perspective as a team that it's

worth using these days to reflect in a more deliberate way on the scriptures every day, which

for many of us now is the only spiritual food that we're receiving. And so we're going to do a special podcast series simply entitled, Be Not Afraid, God's Word in

Uncertain Times. And we'll try to post something every day, usually reflecting on the

scriptures, so that we can listen in on what God is trying to say to us in these days.

Tomorrow, I want to share the conclusion of that piece that I've been reading from in that

book from Christendom to Apostolic Mission, but today I want to just reflect with you on the

gospel simply because it is so amazingly rich. We talked about this passage back at the start of the

pandemic that we've been living through, the lockdown, the shutdown, the quarantining that we've

been doing, this encounter between Jesus and Peter, the first conversation that's recorded

in the gospels post-resurrection, a conversation that's recorded in the Gospels,

post-resurrection, a conversation that Peter had to have been dreading, right?

Because only Jesus and Peter know what Peter's done,

because none of the apostles were there when Peter denied the Lord around a charcoal fire.

So if you can remember back to the beginning of the Easter season, when we began this passage,

it was actually used in that first week, the octave of Easter.

It makes mention, John does, that this conversation happens around a charcoal fire.

And there's only one other place in all the Bible where there's a charcoal fire.

It's three chapters earlier.

It's around a charcoal fire that Peter denies the Lord,

even though he had promised him he would die for him,

...