Jun292025
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Feast of Peter and Paul.

I ran a 5K and came in second in my age group. I beat the guy who came in third by half a second. If the guy had known that, he would have taken his bib and held it out over the finish line and would have beaten me by a one-hundredth of a second. But he didn’t do that because he didn’t know he would lose by a half-second.

On vacation, I got up at four in the morning and fished all morning. I caught nothing. I was so tired around noon, I decided to go back to camp and take a nap. Just after I left the water, a school of large striper fish swam through the place where I was fishing. Later, my father informed me that I missed the fishing that day. Had I known that, I would have slept in, eaten a big breakfast, and caught a lot of fish. But I didn’t know.

My friend qualified for the Boston Marathon, but he missed the cut by three seconds. Had he known this, he could have easily made up three seconds on a 26-mile run. But he didn’t know.

A doctor from Florida called my friend to tell him that his father had suffered a heart attack, but was in stable condition. The friend decided to book a flight the next day. Yet during the night, his father died. Needless to say, he was devastated by the news. He told me later that had he known this, he would have booked a flight immediately and would have seen his father before he passed.

How many times would our lives be better or more productive if we only knew? Doesn’t it make sense to follow after someone who knows?

Today is the feast of Peter and Paul. No two people made more of an impact in the last two thousand years than these two saints. Jesus tells Peter that he did not get his knowledge from any other source except from following Christ. Do you recall the last words that Jesus spoke in the Gospel of John? He addressed these two words to Peter: “Follow Me.” That is why Peter had such a profound impact. He had knowledge from following someone who knows. If we do that, we will also know.  

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