Scripture holds absolutely no power unless is has a message for our lives. We come to the scripture in our context. We have issues that we want resolved. We have questions we want answered. We have doubts we want wiped away. And so, when we find ourselves in these moments, many of us often sit down, open our Bibles, and begin searching for answers. We look for the real, raw stories that seem to relate to our own stories and those stories and then we begin to pray for answers. And yet, there are some stories that just seem too far-fetched; we feel like we can’t relate at all, we think there is no message there for us, and so we turn the page and keep looking.
Such is the case, I believe, with Saul’s conversion on the Damascus Road; it’s so dramatic that it puts us off. It’s so much easier for us to just let this story stay an ancient story that isn’t really all that relevant anymore; like the Tall Tales of the American Frontier. We come to this story, and others like it, and as we read, we cannot help but ask; did this really happen to Saul? Do things like this still happen to people today? Why hasn’t God ever appeared to me in this way? And then we start thinking about the stories we have heard. Occasionally, we will hear people talk about some miraculous transformative experience that is so completely amazing it’s almost unbelievable. Such stories can raise even more doubts in our minds. If we believe that God truly intervenes in such blinding, definitive ways, then why has it never happened to me or to thousands of others? Why does this happen so rarely? Does God pick favorites? Am I really in such a “great” state that God doesn’t need to “turn me around” in such a miraculous conversion?
Indeed, it’s very easy to come to this story of Saul’s conversion and to decide that it really doesn’t speak to our lives. To begin with, we’ve never encountered the Lord in such a way. But even beyond that, we aren’t anything like Saul was. We aren’t religious zealots “breathing threats and murder” against all our opponents; at least I hope not! But here’s the thing; we have all been on wrong paths. We have all done something, or maybe many things, that have been harmful to ourselves or to others. We have all been headstrong, stubborn, blinded by our own ambition, selfish to meet our own need, caught in addictive behaviors, and oblivious of the true cost to others or to ourselves.
I think you all know what I mean. On some level, we have all been on the wrong path. We have all been close-minded. We have been stubborn. In some way, at some point, we have all acted like Paul was acting as he stormed his way toward Damascus; we have felt such seething anger, we have harbored deep hatred, we have acted on irrational impulses. So, the truth of the matter is, Paul’s Damascus Road story is not so far from our own life and experience. And, just like Paul, eventually, we open our hearts and our minds to discover our many errors. It may seem unbelievable as we read some ancient book, but this really is the “stuff” of everyday life.
“Now [Saul] was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’” After that, Saul couldn’t see; for three days he was totally blind. And around that same time, Jesus appeared to the disciple Ananias in Damascus, and calling him to visit Saul, he said, “‘Go, for [Saul] is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.’…So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’”
God is ever-present in our lives. Sometimes it may require patience and resolve and even change to see and understand that. But God is always there, bridging that chasm between despair and hope, between hatred and love, between life and death. God carries us when we can’t carry ourselves; God comforts us when we are sad; and God changes us when we need to be changed.
So the question for us to consider on this day, as we reflect on Saul’s Damascus Road conversion is: What is your blinding light? How has God approached you when you needed it most? What is it that helped you look at reality in a different way? What finally caused you to see where you bad habits would lead? What changed your mind and your heart? What was it that finally got through to you so that you saw the chaos your stubborn refusal was creating? Maybe it was a risk-taking friend who finally confronted us. Or perhaps it was the spouse who opened up to reveal the truth. Or the child who heroically “tells it like it is.” Sometimes it is just the vacancy of our own souls in the middle of the night that finally convinces us; something’s gotta give.
Now that leads us to the real consideration for the day: that moment, that time when you began to see and understand more clearly; did you see the Lord there? But even more, how was God there? Because what we believe is that God in Christ Jesus is in the business of changing lives. Paul’s Damascus Road conversion story is not some “out-of-this-world” reality; it is just one example of exactly how God inserts himself into the intersection of our lives to open our eyes, to help us see straight, to point us down the right path, and even to change us if we’re headed the wrong way. Do you now begin to see God standing there? It is often only in the past that we can identify the hand of God upon our lives. Hindsight is 20/20. From that vantage point, we can see the Spirit at work. Because ultimately, it is not the honest friend, the heroic child, or our soul’s vacancy that turns us around. Instead, it is a light that turns on within us—and it is our willingness to take the risk of seeing anew that makes the turnaround possible. We stand at a crossroads. We have a choice. We can launch blindly forward, or linger, waiting. When we linger, that makes all the difference.
I’m a big hiker. I don’t hike as much as I used to, but unless it’s raining, I never turn down a good opportunity to get away and spend several hours walking in the mountains. Now, there’s all kinds of rules about hiking, like “leave no trace” and that sort of thing. Any of you who have a similar love of hiking know what you’re supposed to do, should you ever get lost out in the woods. Some well-trained survivalist types may be good at following water flow or determining cardinal directions. But the average nature enthusiast like me is not so skilled. And so, we are taught that if we get lost when hiking, the best thing to do is to stop right where you are the moment your discover you are lost, and stay there until someone finds you. Because, as we all know, when we keep wandering around without any idea where we are, we just get ourselves more lost.
And that’s what we have to do in life too. When bad choices and bad habits are spiraling our lives out of control, the best thing to do is just stop, wait, linger, tarry. And somehow, someway, God will always come to us. The Lord will find us; he will open our eyes, and then he will point us in the right direction. It may not be that Christ himself comes in a blinding flash of light—it may indeed be that friend, or spouse, or child; it may even be a stranger. One way or another, though, the promise of scripture is that God will help us see straight. God has already done it hundreds of times and hundreds of ways in our lives; sometimes big, sometimes small. Conversions happen all the time. You and I are still stubborn. We remain caught in yet more addictive patterns—if it’s not one thing, it’s something else. We are still blind and need the light. We are all walking the Damascus Road breathing threats and destruction. And so God keeps encountering us. The bumper sticker is trite but true: “God isn’t done with me yet.” Certainly, God was not “done” with Paul once he first saw the light. Converted, he remained stubborn and blind. Converted, we remain stubborn and blind. So God keeps coming. The Lord has appeared even to you and he will come again, and again, and again. The Lord has changed even you and he will change you again, and again, and again. What happened to the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus happens to all of us. As outlandish as it may sometimes seem, scripture is not out-of-touch. God changes us.
In fact, that’s one of the most consistent themes of the Bible. God is the agent of change; and with God as the agent of change, all things are possible. I remember when I was a little kid and I’d get in trouble, my mom would say, “I’m so mad, I can’t see straight!” So it is with all of us—without God, we’re in a lot of trouble, we are so messed up we can’t see straight. But when we open ourselves to God’s presence in our lives, he’ll be there, he will get things straightened out, and then God will open our eyes to see the better way; the way of life.
The challenge for us is to follow that Way.
