Today's Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 13 verses 7 through 12:
7 He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas the magician (for that is the meaning of his name) opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. 9 But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him 10 and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? 11 And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.” Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand. 12 Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
In every age the charge is always the same: those opposed to the movement of God demonize it and call it crooked. This is the "eternal sin" (often misinterpreted as the "unforgivable sin"); it is the sin that has been taking place and will take place in every age for all eternity. The sin is calling crooked what God has called straight and unclean what God has called clean. We see it in another of the official charges leveled at the disciples in the book of Acts: "These men are turning the world upside down." In fact, they were turning it right side up. But those who are accustomed to an upside down world will always see a rightside world as wrong. It takes new eyes to see.
Thus enters Paul and his curse, which in fact actually had the prospect for blessing. For Paul himself had been just like the others, cursing and persecuting and charging this new movement of God with being crooked. And then a flash fell from the sky to make him blind for a short while. And in the frailty of his blindness he now saw what he could not see in the strength of his sight.
"He will be a sign that will be opposed," the old man Simeon said of the infant Jesus on the day of his dedication. And he has. He has always been a wrong way sign opposed by those who claim to see rightly.
And so we pray for blindness, that the eyes of hearts may be opened to see what cannot be perceived by the eyes of our head.
No comments:
Post a Comment