Who would have imagined that the fire breathing, persecuting Saul of Tarsus would have become the early Church’s foremost theologian and preacher?
Most of the letters written in the New Testament were written by Paul (formally Saul). Prior to his conversion most of the Christian churches would have been praying for protection from Saul and his persecuting attitude and actions. God acts when we least expect Him to. Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest and kill as many Christians as he could find and crush the Church there into extinction. Yet on the Damascus road Jesus threw Paul off his donkey, blinded him and told him to stop his activities and obey what God was asking him to do. As a result of this incident Paul was led by his friends into Damascus and left in a house where he began to pray and seek God in a different way.
Meanwhile God tells a Christian disciple named Ananias that he was to go to meet Saul and declare God’s purpose for his life. Ananias was not eager to do this as he had heard reports about Paul’s cruelty and persecution. Yet he went, spoke God’s word to Saul and Saul’s eyes were opened. Saul became Paul – God’s apostle to the Gentiles.
Paul, along with Peter opened the Church to the Gentile nations so that the gospel of Jesus could be preached to every person on the planet. Yet it is amazing the way God chooses people to do His purpose.
He chooses Saul, who is steeped and trained in the Jewish traditions, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a teacher himself of the Law and those traditions, to reach the Gentiles. At the same time he takes Peter and James (Jesus’ brother), who are uneducated and untrained in the Law and the traditions to reach the Jewish people with the good news of God’s saving act for all people through Jesus Christ.
Do you consider yourself just an ordinary person, not much of anything really, with no extraordinary gifts or abilities? Then God has a plan for your life!
You might say that you have never had a Damascus road experience like Paul. Maybe you do not need one! Paul was knocked off his donkey because God could not get through to him in any other way. Maybe you are not as hard-headed as Paul.
God does extraordinary things through ordinary people. The weird thing is that when they do it they do not even know that they have done something extraordinary.
We look for the spectacular, when God looks for what is the most effective way to communicate His love to a lost and forlorn world, to people who feel that God does not care about them.
