For those of you not as familiar with baseball, the closer is the pitcher who usually comes in the 9th (or last) inning to protect the lead. Perfection is the standard for pitchers chosen to serve as a closer for a team. However, no closer is perfect…they can often make fans nervous by giving up hits and home runs even when they are successful... they even sometimes lose the game all together. If you ask any successful closer what is the secret to being able to go after the next hitter or save the next game, you'll hear a strikingly similar refrain...you have to have a short memory and focus on the hitter that is at bat (or the game that is being played that day). In other words, it doesn't matter how bad (or good) things went the last time around…this time is what you can control right now.
Peter offers a great example of someone who had many captivating moments in his life (walking on water and then taking his eyes off Jesus in Matthew 14:28-30, denying Christ 3 times before His crucifixion in John 18:17-26, and speaking to the crowd the day 3,000 were saved in Acts 2:41...among others)…good and bad...that he could have gotten stuck on and not moved on to what he could control that moment. After all of this, Peter was able to preserve and have a short memory of his failings…this helped him to follow Christ all the way to dying on a cross himself (John 21:18). So, let's don't beat ourselves up over what happened 5 minutes, a day, a month, a year, or 5 years ago (Let me be clear here…I am not saying that we don't have to confess our sins to God)…but we need to be able to move on quickly in order to be effective in the only place we can take action…the present.
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