John 21:21

John 21:21

It is the language of devout inquiry. A friend is inquiring into a friend's future. To this inquiry he sets no bounds but one, and this is implied rather than expressed. It is implied that the friend is to be a servant of Jesus Christ. Peter has just been shown, as in a mirror, the outline of his own future, and he puts the natural question touching a comrade, whom perhaps he feels to be greater than himself, "Lord, and what shall this man do?"

I. When you ask for your friend, "What shall this man do?" when your heart travels forth with him over the mountain-tops of fame, till you lose sight of him in the mist and the distance; when, in the fulness of a comrade's affection, you strive to help him with your prayers; then covet for him earnestly the better, the supernatural gifts. Pray that he may never lose his love for the poor and simple never relax the fervency of his prayers never dream, or, if he cannot wholly avoid the dream, at least never confound it with waking certainties that either common sense, or moral philosophy, or metaphysics has spoken the last word on the mysteries of Calvary, or the power of the Resurrection.

II. "Lord, what shall this man do?" Take this thought with you till it becomes a rule, a standard, by which you gauge success. Apply it to others, apply it to yourselves. In choosing your life's career will you, even in your conceptions of good, be worldly? Will you weigh everything beforehand but God? Or will your vision of what a man, of what a friend, of what your own life shall do, include as a necessary ingredient the service of the Lord Jesus Christ? Will His mind be your mind, His causes your causes? We ask the question; the future hides the answer.

H. M. Butler, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,Jan. 22nd, 1880.