Friday, May 30, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Kinship
Do not be afraid.
God speaks this way over and over, because we are. Afraid, even Paul, who strikes me at first as fearless, filled with courage speaking for Jesus to Jews who want to kill him for being a heretic, and speaking to Greeks who worshipped anything but Jesus. Including the Corinthians, with whom he “settled” for a year and a half. Before Paul came they worshipped Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Demeter and Poseidon.
Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you. I have many people in this city.
Eventually the angry Jews rose up, but even then the Roman ruler Gallio protected Paul.
I do not wish to be a judge in such matters. And he drove the Jews away from the tribunal.
Often I remember what the Jewish rulers did after hearing Caiaphas speak of Jesus. “It is better that one man die than for the whole nation to be destroyed.” After the session adjourned, “each one went to his own house.” There, alone in his own house with conscience and thoughts, each one had a much better chance to hear God than when they were listening to each other. This has always been true (Genesis 3) and always will be true, as far as I can tell.
Paul too, on the road to Damascus, was alone, and he heard God clearly then as he had not heard him before. The stories in Acts often place Paul with others, friends and fellow Christians, in large and small communities. But he surely sought solitude often, just to listen, separating himself for a short time simply to pray. His visions came then, and his deep sense of God’s forgiveness in the wake of his own awful sin – killing Christ’s followers.
This he never forgot and referred to it sometimes in his letters. Now, leaving Corinth with Priscilla and Aquila, Paul receives God’s permission to shave his head, perhaps after living as a Nazarite for a period of time, with nothing from the grapevine, uncut hair and other acts of commitment to the Lord.
As Luke tells the stories in his book, I get a sense of partnership between God and Paul. They had a common goal, and they worked together. Their communication seems remarkable. I think of Jesus too, but he’s a different case.
I think of Moses hundreds of years before. When Moses saw the burning bush he had been living a virtuous life, but not one marked by vows and abstinence. Paul on the other hand committed himself to work hard to worship God and become the man God made him to be, and then encourage everyone he met to do the same. Â God honored his commitment.
Paul, Jesus and Moses experienced kinship with their Heavenly Father that brought great reward to their lives and the lives of those around them. Of course there are many others. Hebrews chapter 11 describes several of them.
Rather than covet that kinship for myself, I want simply to be grateful to know these stories. God grants the kinship, and I want to be satisfied with that.
The Lord, the Most High, the Awesome, is the great king over all the earth. He chooses us for our inhiertance, and mounts his throne amid shouts of joy and trumpet blasts.
 (Acts 18, Psalm 47, Luke 24, John 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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