Sunday School Class Proverbs 26:1-12 Fools…
Choruses: All over the world (c); Sometimes
Alleluia (c); We worship & adore You (G); He was wounded for our
transgressions (F)
Scripture reading: #643
Sunday evening - Chili supper by the
Wednesday
@
'Sometimes we suffer'
Acts 9.1. Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out
murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2. and asked him for letters to the synagogues in
3. As he neared
6. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be
told what you must do." 7. The men traveling with Saul stood there
speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8. Saul got up from
the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him
by the hand into
9. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink
anything. 10. In
12. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and
place his hands on him to restore his sight." 13. "Lord,"
Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the
harm he has done to your saints in
15. But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is
my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and
before the people of
17. Then Ananias went to the house and entered it.
Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord--Jesus, who
appeared to you on the road as you were coming here--has sent me so that you
may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit."
18. Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's
eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19. and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples
in
We are a society that worships youthfulness,
vigor, health, success, extravagance and luxury.
As a society we hold up for emulation the arrogant,
greedy and crass among us...idealizing if not idolizing those traits and individuals as
evidence of God's blessings.
We tend to look
upon those who suffer or are impoverished as lacking God's blessings...of
perhaps having missed God's will or perhaps just not quite having 'what it
takes.'
As Christians in
'western' society we talk
a lot about Jesus as Son of God but practically ignore His direct teachings
preferring to follow those teachings of Paul.
As Christians in
'western' society we base our 'christianity' upon a
religion artifacted out of the Middle
Ages with its wrappings and trappings and dogmas. In western Protestantism we
link our biases to extracted Pauline passages. We value many of his personal
biases and statements directed to specific cultures and traditions as oracle of
God and tend to ignore statements that truly were Oracle of God.
One of those
statements that truly was Oracle of God was this about
Saul of Tarsus, "15. But the Lord said to
Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the
Gentiles and their kings and before the people of
It was God's Will
that the Apostle Paul suffer.
Paul was God's "chosen instrument to carry (His)
name before the (world)" and it was God's Will that Paul suffer.
Why?
Do you remember
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" saying,
“Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs not to
make reply,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of death,
Rode the six hundred.”
We must not become so wrapped in our society's values
that we assume it our 'right' to respond to the Will of God by reasoning why
and making reply.
If God has called
you - you quite possibly will suffer. Those who haven't, perhaps just haven't
yet...
Are we called to a
better calling and a different Will of God than Paul, Peter, James, John and
the others? We are each to
follow where He leads and accept the Grace that will be sufficient for our
needs, whatever - wherever.
So, "...continue to work out
your salvation with fear and trembling, 13. for
it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good
purpose." Philippians 2.12