Acts 3:16

This verse is from a speech Peter gave in Jerusalem shortly after a stunning public event: he and his companion John had healed a man who had been unable to walk from birth — someone so well-known in the city that he had begged at the temple entrance for years. The astonished crowd started looking at Peter and John like they were miracle workers, and Peter pushes back hard. He wants the crowd to understand that he and John did not do this. The healing happened through faith in the name and authority of Jesus — the same Jesus who had recently been crucified and, according to Peter, raised from the dead. Even the faith involved in the healing, Peter suggests, was itself something that flowed from Jesus, not something the man or the disciples manufactured on their own.

Jesus, there are things in my life that I cannot honestly explain apart from you — healings and survivals and moments of grace I didn't earn. Help me resist the pull to own what is yours. Teach me Peter's instinct: to point away from myself, clearly and without embarrassment. Amen.

Peter is almost arguing with the crowd here — you can feel him waving his hands. You can almost hear the edge in his voice: don't look at us. The healed man is standing right there, legs that had never worked now holding his full weight, and Peter uses that undeniable moment not to build his own reputation but to redirect every eye in the crowd somewhere else. He's saying: the power is not in us. It never was. It's in the name. And he says it twice, as if once wasn't enough to make it stick. That instinct runs directly against the grain of how most of us are wired. We live in a world that tells you to build your personal brand, to let people know what you bring to the table. And here is Peter, standing in his single most credible moment, choosing to disappear. What would it look like for you to do the same? When something genuinely good happens — a relationship heals, you find words you didn't know you had, you come through something you should not have been able to survive — who are you pointing people toward?