Acts 8, verses 26 through 40
Isaiah 53, verses 7 and 8
Philip the Evangelist - not the Apostle Philip - was one of the 12 deacons chosen to administer support to widows in the early church, along with the martyr Stephen. Much of Philip’s story is told in Acts 8.
We focus on a scene where Philip is told by an angel to drop everything he’s doing, and to hit the road south out of Jerusalem, into the desert toward Gaza. Without so much as a question, he mounts up and does as he’s guided to do. The famous encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch follows, which would have major consequences not only for the eunuch - who would end up baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit as a new Christian - but for Ethiopa, where he would spread the Gospel in the land of the future Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
So, by responding to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, without knowing why he should leave the spiritually enriching gig he was involved with, Philip played a major role in presenting Jesus to the African continent, which has been fertile (and dangerous) ground for the Lord ever since.
I hear a message here for myself and for every other servant of Jesus, those of us who have come to a place where, if God isn’t at the center of it, nothing in this world satisfies. Philip the Evangelist exemplifies what it means to be reborn into a life of true meaning.
