Acts 9, verses 1 through 31
Saul, the most feared and fearsome persecutor of the followers of The Way, was on the road to Damascus in order to arrest more Christians to take them back to Jerusalem to face the authorities. Jesus came to him, and converted Saul on the spot. For three days he was blind, tended to by Ananias, who’d received a vision from Jesus to heal Paul’s vision and bring him into the fold. Saul preached the Gospel in Damascus, then went to Jerusalem, where Barnabas vouched for him, as the other disciples did not believe the conversion to be real.
I’ve always been deeply effected by Paul’s conversion, partly because I once believed that he was an impostor who’d hijacked the Gospel and turned it into something other than what Jesus intended. As I approach the Bible with reborn eyes, I see that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Paul was an integral part of God’s vast plan of Salvation for all of humanity, spelled out from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22. His teaching is not an easy one, which is probably why he is often denigrated and/or avoided, both within and out of the modern church. There’s no sugar coating, no vacillating, no bargaining. He says we will suffer - and he also says that our suffering is our strength. No one wants to hear this, but it’s one of the keys to our walk with Christ Jesus.
