Breakfast After the Worst Shift of Your Life

In 2018, a young ER nurse named David Chen walked out of Mercy Hospital in Sacramento after losing his first patient — a teenager from a car accident. He drove home, sat in his driveway for forty minutes, and decided he was done with medicine. He picked up shifts at his brother-in-law's landscaping company. Mowed lawns. Trimmed hedges. Went back to what he knew before nursing school.

Three weeks later, his old charge nurse, Maria, showed up at a job site with two coffees and a bag of breakfast burritos. She didn't lecture him. She didn't quote hospital policy. She just sat on the tailgate of his truck and ate with him. Then she asked one question: "Do you still care about people who are hurting?"

David said yes. She asked again the next week. And again the week after that. Three times — not because she doubted his answer, but because he needed to hear himself say it until he believed it.

David went back. He has been an ER nurse for eight years now.

That is exactly what Jesus did on the beach that morning. Peter had gone back to fishing — back to the life before the call — because his failure felt final. But Jesus didn't bring a sermon. He brought charcoal and fish and bread. He brought breakfast. And then He asked three times, not to punish, but to restore. Every denial met with a quiet, deliberate reinstatement: "Feed My sheep."

Your worst failure is never the last word when the Risen Lord is cooking breakfast on the shore.