Some people listening to Saint Paul’s conversion story might be inclined to think that those things just do not happen anymore. Wrong. They happen every day. Every day people are falling to the ground and like Paul are helpless. They were powerless. Some unfortunately never get up. Like Paul, those who fell to the ground were able to get up with the help of someone else. For many that someone else was God, Jesus.
Those who got up had come to believe that a power greater than themselves could set them free.
What a joy to witness this transformation in the lives of people we know and love. In the words of Amazing Grace, they were lost and now they have been found.
Important to being found is a willingness to allow God entrance into our lives. Jesus sent Ananias to Paul but initially Ananias was reluctant to reach out to Paul. Maybe you or someone you know has been sent by God to help lift someone who was down and out. Like Ananias we also may have been initially reluctant but responded knowing that we had the potential to be a wretch like them.
Listening to the account of Paul’s conversion leaves us in awe.
How could God save someone like Paul? Paul was surely an evil man. But his story is important as we consider our personal stories and acknowledge our own weakness and sin.
How can we believe that no matter how bad we have fallen, God is there to pick us up? We can have faith that God knows that many of us will need a lot of lifting during our lifetime.
That He lifts people up should not be something mysterious. It is happening every day. Every day He makes available the food we need to feed our souls.
He told us in so many circumstances that He is real food for us and if we choose to avail ourselves of this food we will have life, His life with us.
The post resurrection stores we have been hearing, the places Jesus has been going and people Jesus has been meeting - they are revealing the deep desire that Jesus has to be with us.
This is often lost on many of us. Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me? Jesus spoke those words to Paul.
He did not say why are you persecuting them, He said, "me."
We persecute Him when we shut Him out of our lives.
When we let Him in, that is when He can work miracles in our lives, when He can transform us, pick us up, and put us back in the saddle.
