In their own words: Day 17

Acts 9.40

Peter put all of Tabitha’s friends outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’ Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up.

Peter had been called to Joppa, to the bedside of a much-loved member of the Christian community, Tabitha, who had fallen ill and died. She was a renowned needlewoman, “devoted to good works and acts of charity” who made clothes for the poor, and her friends desperately show Peter the clothes she has made when he arrives. How can she be dead? How can they manage without her? Peter restores her to life, and to her friends, who are overjoyed.

Peter is calm and confident in this extraordinary situation. Who could have imagined that this rather flaky (“rocky” in the wrong sense!) man, who denied knowing Jesus, and so often put his foot in his mouth, would be capable of this? Peter almost certainly didn’t see it in himself. It isn’t his own power, of course, but the power of the God in whom he trusts, which raises Tabitha, but Peter is the one through whom God works.

·         Are there things you have felt called to do which you think you could never do? Why do you think that?