The Center of it All

Why did Peter look down? He was walking on water, he was doing something that no one other than Jesus had done in the history of the world and he chose to look down? What does it mean? Is that a pointer to human pride?
Many times Jesus calls humanity and those that follow him to simply keep their eyes on him and keep him as the central point of their focus. He promises that if we do this that our lives will be enriched. This is present in this story as Peter keeps walking on water as long as Jesus is his central focus. Yet, as soon as Peter looks away and chooses not to have Jesus as the central focus that is when the drowning starts.
So if this is the case why would Peter look away? Surely, he knew that as long as Jesus was his central focus that things would go well for him. Or did he? Did Peter know that Jesus was the cause of his walking on water? Did the thought come into his mind that he may just be doing this by himself, or maybe even that Jesus was doing it but he didn't really need to have him as his main focus. Whatever the case, he chose to look away.
This seems to be a sign of pride on the part of Peter and a symbol of the troubles that humanity faces in keeping Christ at the centre of their focus. Peter starts walking on water and everything is going super well for him as long as his eyes are on Christ. But at one point Peter had to actually realize what he was doing, he had to have at some point clued in to the fact that he was walking on water. That HE was walking on water. The only other person to do that was Jesus. So what other reaction should be expected from him but to see what HE was doing. At some point he got it in his head that he was doing it by himself. That what he was doing was of his own ability and did not directly relate to the fact that Jesus was at the centre of his focus. Or even that he didn't really need Jesus to be the centre of his focus.

If his eyes had stayed on Christ there is no doubt that he would have been able to stay on the water, but he would not have been able to explain the feeling other than what his vision of Christ was. Others could have given account, but Peter himself would not have been able to describe what happened, his description would have been Christ centered. Unfortunately as soon as he takes his eyes off of Christ to look at the water (either out of horror or out of pride, or both) things fall apart, and all of the sudden there is not reason why he would want to boast about what he was able to do.
The reality is that he was not doing it at all. This is the same with our everyday lives, we start doing things that are amazing when our focus is on God, and then we want to bask in our own accomplishments so we look away and focus on ourselves. This is where the spiritual low comes in. IF we were to keep our focus on God, we might not even be able to explain everything that happened other than explaining the fact that our focus was God. Our explanation of the amazing things that happen would be nothing other than "I have no idea exactly, but God was working". Others would have to give testament, and what tends to happen when others give testament is they do not sugarcoat it as much as we might do if we were talking our own situations up. The situation might actually be told as it happened instead of building ourselves up in the story. So there would actually be real genuine stories about what was happening. Real eyewitness accounts into what took place and amazing things that God did through different individuals, and then when the individual is asked all they can do is point to God as their focus.

It really is too bad that so often we fail when it comes to this and take credit where credit is not due. I pray that anyone that reads this and even those that don't can keep God as the center of their focus, and have no other explanation as to why things are happening other than pointing to God.