Today's Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 26 verses 12 through 16:
12 "With this in mind, I was travelling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, 13when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' 15I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.'"
Yesterday, something very unexpected and old happened at the end of the service. After I gave the invitation for people to come and join the church, a very good and dear friend came and walked the aisle to announce that she intends to enter into vocational Gospel ministry. Or, in the language of much former generations, she came to surrender her life to ministry.
It was about time. I mean that literally; it was and is about time. And the time has come.
My friend's decision reminds me of a letter I just came across a week or so ago while cleaning out some personal effects in preparation for the move. It is a letter I wrote to Jim Somerville, then pastor of First Baptist Church Washington, DC, after a summer I spent there prior to what I thought was going to be my enrollment in law school at American University. The letter is a kind of explanation about why I would not be joining the church. I would not be joining because I had decided after three years of fighting it all throughout seminary, I needed to admit that I was called to ministry. I was surrendering to the ministry. And so, I would not be staying in DC, but was moving back to Durham to say yes to ministry. Though I was too shy to say it outright, what I was really saying to Rev. Somerville was that his preaching over that summer had sparked something in me that I had to say yes and could not say no to. I had said no for too long already.
In Paul's vision on the Damascus Road, Jesus said, "It hurts to kick against the goads." A goad was a rod used to poke oxen and other animals to move forward. To kick against the goad was painful and finally exhausting. Finally, in due time, surrender is learned. It's either submission or misery.
In the Gospel of Thomas there is a quote:
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
There is something within each of us which when sparked tells us down deep the direction we are to take for our lives. To fight against it means struggle and pain and a deep disturbance in our soul. Such things will ultimately destroy us. And so the only the only real choice is surrender. And when it's about time, somewhere on that Damascus Road of life, we make it.
And that makes all the difference.
* I am appending a copy of the letter I sent to Rev. Somerville.
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