Today's Daily lesson comes from Acts chapter 9 verses 1 through 8:
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ 5He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’ 7The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.
Today in the Liturgical calendar is the remembrance of St. Paul's conversion. This is a day for remembering that it is a deepest truth that people really can be changed by the grace and mercy of God.
It's hard to articulate just how difficult it must have been for some of those early Christians to accept Paul as a fellow believer, and later leader in Christ's church. Paul was a zealous persecutor of the church, and he held the cloaks of those who stoned the deacon martyr Stephen. Yet, when he was changed he was changed; and the early church accepted and came to embrace the truth of that change.
This coming Sunday we'll read the Lesson from 1 Corinthians which says, "Love believes all things, and it hopes all things."
I am glad the early church believed and hoped in Christ's good news for itself that it could also believe and hope in the good news for others.
We can be changed; and I have been.
Thanks be to God.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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