Grant's Second Commission

In 1854, Ulysses Grant resigned from the United States Army under a cloud of shame. His commanding officer had confronted him about his drinking, and Grant, rather than face a court-martial, quietly turned in his commission. What followed were seven brutal years of humiliation. He tried farming outside St. Louis and failed. He sold firewood on street corners in winter. He applied for a county engineering post and was rejected. By 1860, the West Point graduate who had served with distinction in Mexico was clerking in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois, taking orders from younger brothers who pitied him.

Then Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the nation needed officers. Grant wrote letters to the War Department that went unanswered. But through a chain of modest openings, he found his way back into uniform, back into the very vocation where he had stumbled. Within four years, he commanded all Union armies and accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

On a quiet lakeshore in Galilee, Jesus did something remarkably similar with Peter. Peter had failed as publicly as any man could, denying his Lord three times beside a charcoal fire. But Jesus did not reassign him to some safer, lesser task. He built another charcoal fire, served breakfast, and asked three pointed questions — "Do you love me?" — one for each denial. Then came the same commission Peter had received at the very beginning: "Feed my sheep." Grace did not give Peter a different calling. Grace gave him back the same one.