When God Takes You Back to an Old Place

Returning isn’t always the same as going backwards.

Sometimes the places we would rather avoid become the very places where grace gives our story a different ending. Image: Canva Pro.

Welcome to today’s reflection.

Each weekday, paid subscribers receive an exclusive reflection designed to offer a thoughtful pause amid ordinary life. My prayer is that these brief pieces create a little space for curiosity, contemplation and wonder amid the noise of the day.

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There are places I would happily never visit again.

Not because there is anything particularly remarkable about them, but because of what happened there. Sometimes it is a particular hospital, a church building, or sometimes simply a stretch of road that carries memories I would rather not call to mind.

We all have places that become tangled up with moments of disappointment, grief, failure or regret. The geography itself remains unchanged, but our experience of it means we can never quite see it in the same way again.

That is one reason I have found myself thinking about Peter recently.

John tells us that, after the resurrection, Peter and several of the other disciples returned to fishing. It sounds almost ordinary, even a little anticlimactic after everything that had happened. Yet the more I have thought about the story, the more convinced I have become that something deeply personal is unfolding beneath the surface.

I no longer think this passage is primarily about fish. I think it is about what Jesus does with places, memories and stories that seem beyond repair.