There’s a moment in Luke 5 that we rush past too quickly. Peter has just witnessed an impossible catch: nets are breaking, boats sinking, fish flopping.
And instead of falling at Jesus’ feet with joy at this miraculous moment, he falls with dread. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
Wait what? Like, get away from me?
That’s not the reaction we expect. But it’s the most honest reaction in the Gospels. Peter isn’t rejecting Jesus. He’s recognizing him. He’s standing in the presence of holiness and realizing, with sudden clarity, exactly what he is by comparison.
Simple. Flawed. Unfit. A sinner.
His instinct is to create distance, because proximity to something this pure feels like it should expose him, undo him.
I know that feeling. You do too. Anyone who has ever really looked at their own heart in the presence of God knows that feeling. Vulnerability in front of holiness feels dangerous. So we manage the distance. We keep Jesus close enough to be useful, far enough to stay safe.
But watch what happens to Peter over the next three years. Watch, especially, what happens after the resurrection.
In John 21, Peter is back in a boat, back to the life he knew before. And back to the shame of having denied Jesus three times just days earlier. Then someone on the shore calls out, and John recognizes him first, “It is the Lord.” Peter doesn’t wait for the boat. He doesn’t compose himself. He wraps his cloak around him and throws himself into the water, swimming toward the very presence that once made him say “get away from me”.
That’s the whole Gospel in one motion. The same man, the same holiness, and now, instead of pushing away, he’s diving in. Literally.
What changed wasn’t Jesus. What changed was Peter’s understanding of what Jesus does with fear and failure. He had denied him. He had run. But Jesus didn’t meet him with the distance Peter once demanded of himself. He met him with breakfast and restoration on a beach. Peter learned, the hard way and then the beautiful way, that the same presence which exposes us is the presence that holds us.
That’s the safety we’re talking about when we talk about safety in Jesus. It isn’t the absence of exposure. It’s the discovery that we can be fully seen; our fears, our failures, our unfit hearts and still be wanted. Still be called by name. Still be worth swimming toward.
At Oasis Rest International, we get this. People carrying the weight of ministry often carry Peter’s first instinct too: a fear that if anyone got too close, if God got too close, what they’d find wouldn’t hold up. Our hope is that the people we serve come to know what Peter came to know: that the presence which once felt threatening is the same presence worth jumping out of the boat for.
You don’t have to manage the distance. You’re safe enough to fall apart…and close enough to be made whole.