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Is This All There Is?
“Rise and enter the city,
and you will be told
what you are to do.”
Acts 9:6
The dramatic account of Paul’s encounter with the risen Lord never fails to move me deeply, no matter how many times I have read it or heard it read. The reason it has this effect on me, I believe, is because it illustrates so compellingly the divine power at work in the world to change people’s lives.
Change is something which we all deeply desire but, at the same time, also dread, particularly as we get older. Who of us has not thought, at some time or other, perhaps even
quite recently, “There must be something more in life than this.” Christ declares in John’s gospel, “I have come that ye may have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Where does this greater abundance come from? It can only come when we are able to let go of those ties which hold us fast and condemn us to doing the same old things in the same old way. These same old things, however stultifying and limiting they may be, are at least familiar, and that is why we hold on to them, rather than opening ourselves to new possibilities.
Change means moving into the unknown, and the unknown is scary. To break with habits and conventions to which we have grown accustomed, something new and wonderful must enter our lives, something like the Lord’s appearance to Paul. In the light of this new reality everything looks different. Paul writes to the Philippians:
Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.
—Philippians 3:7-9
An experience such as Paul’s on the Damascus road cannot be made to happen. It is a work of divine grace. Yet fortunately the independence of such experiences from human activity is not absolute but relative. We can at least draw closer to such a transformative experience, by facing up to the limitations of our present life and imploring the divine mercy to change us into what God wants us to become.
Such a venture requires us to commit ourselves with our whole being. The good news of the Christian gospel is that it is never too late to change. The example of Paul shows us how remarkable this change can be, both for ourselves and for those with whom we come into contact. Paul set out to Damascus “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). The grace of Christ led him to baptism at the hands of Ananias (verse 18) and to the reception of the holy spirit (verse17), which made him a fearless apostle of the same Jesus whose disciples he had just persecuted.
Like Paul, each of us is a “chosen instrument” of God (verse 15), destined for some purpose which only we can accomplish. As with Paul, the sufferings which we endure and are part and parcel of human experience can be made to advance God’s purpose and our personal transformation. In the words of today’s collect, we acknowledge that through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without God, and we pray that by the help of the divine grace we may please God both in will and in deed.
June 10, 2007
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