Today's Scripture Reading (March 5, 2024): Acts 9
Back in college, I found myself in a conflict with
someone and had no idea why. I was a sophomore, and my opponent was a freshman.
I had seen him on campus several times and tried to engage him in conversation
but was shut out each time. I made excuses for him; Maybe he hadn't heard me or
had to go somewhere. But one afternoon, I saw him playing his guitar in a
common area. I am a somewhat adequate guitarist, so I thought maybe this was a
way to connect with him. I sat beside him and complimented him on his playing. In
response, he simply got up and left. And I was confused. To my knowledge, I had
never met this guy, and yet, there was obviously a conflict between us. My
problem was I had no idea what the conflict might be.
I tend to be persistent, so I kept trying to chip
away at the broken relationship. For his part, he started to tolerate me. Our
relationship advanced to the point that we could sit in the same group of
people and talk without him leaving. Then, we started to have a few one-on-one
conversations. And when we started talking, I had to ask. "You are mad at
me for some reason, but I am unaware of our conflict. What exactly did I do to
earn your dislike?"
He responded on the why, which essentially came down
to two situations. First, I had briefly dated someone he was interested in dating.
And because of my dating life, he never got a chance to date the person he
thought was his dream girl. But it was the second situation that really turned
him against me. He sat beside a girl during a thousand-kilometer bus ride
coming to check out the college I was attending, and she wouldn't shut up about
me. Two girls were too much. And I understood his frustration, but I smiled
when he told me the second girl's name. All he knew her by was her first name, which
was Cheri. I knew exactly who she was as soon as he told me this mystery girl's
name. I had the privilege of telling him that my sister was the girl he sat
beside during that thousand-kilometer ride. Any missed opportunity with her was
not my fault; it was his misunderstanding.
Sometimes, I wonder how much Saul understood his
reputation. Did he know that the emerging Christian Church feared him? Did Saul
understand that his reputation had already preceded him to the empire's major
cities? Did he know that the Christians in Damascus were already afraid just
because they had heard he was coming? I don't know the answer to these
questions, but maybe he did. As a result, it would take a direct intervention
from God to get Ananias and Saul together. There is no way Ananias would ever
have sought out Saul except that God had come to him and told him to go. And
there was no way that Saul would have accepted anything from Ananias had God
not met him on the Damascus Road. Regardless of the intervention, that first
meeting between the two men must have been filled with tension, as the men
tried to get behind the reputations and confront the flesh-and-blood person they
had grown to fear and maybe even hate.
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Acts 10
No comments:
Post a Comment