Daily Lesson for July 6, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 9 verses 36 through 43:

36 Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas.* She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. 37At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. 38Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, ‘Please come to us without delay.’ 39So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. 40Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’ Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. 41He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. 42This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. 43Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

This is my idea of heaven -- waking again in the Upper Room, with all the people whom we have shown kindness to and helped standing before us as witnesses to what we've done. In their hands are the tangible gifts -- tunics, blankets, clothes, cups of cold water, the visitation logs for prisons, bail paid to jails.

This is what Tabitha awoke to in the room upstairs.

But not that only, the story goes on. The last verses says after he raised Tabitha, Peter stayed on in town at the home of a man named Simon, a tanner. And it was here that Peter had the dream of gentile inclusion.

Imagine that! What began with probably a little, old lady making tunics for widows, ends with the realization of a dream which would change the whole church and the whole world.

"And she who is faithful in small things will be given much," -- in the Upper Room.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.