Advent Devotional for Dec. 17
Wednesday, December 17 Acts 28:1-6
Our healing serves as a testimony to others.
Often we Christians do not get to the end of the book of Acts; our comfort level in the New Testament is in the gospels or the theology of the epistles. This is a shame, because this gem of a story is often missed. Paul is bound for Rome as a prisoner to plead his case before the emperor when the ship wrecks. All reach shore safely on an unknown island, which they find out from the natives is named Malta. The natives show kindness to the strangers, building a fire for them. As Paul helps to gather wood for the fire, he is attacked by a viper, and the natives naturally presume that Paul is a murderer who is suffering divine punishment for his evil deeds. Remarkably, though, Paul flicks the viper off right into the fire, and doesn’t swell up or drop dead as the natives expected. Then the natives change their mind and decide that Paul is not a murderer, but instead a god.
“The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,” wrote that same Paul some years earlier when he wrote to the church at Rome. I wonder if his own words flashed through his mind as he heard the natives talk. All creation is in bondage to decay and darkness, and waits for someone who is not in bondage to those things, someone who is truly free. All creation is hurting, he may have written, and waits for someone who knows how to be healed. All creation is sick and desperately seeking medicine. All creation is slowly dying and desperately seeking the secret to new life. When Paul shook that viper off into the fire, the natives knew they had met someone with that secret; they knew they had met a child of God. Just so, when we display healing in our lives, we testify to the reality of God. When we live whole lives in a fragmented world, when we demonstrate emotional wholeness in our spirits and share that with others, when we take our satisfaction not in our achievements but in who God has made us to be, then we show the world something of God’s character.
Our healing serves as a testimony to others.
Often we Christians do not get to the end of the book of Acts; our comfort level in the New Testament is in the gospels or the theology of the epistles. This is a shame, because this gem of a story is often missed. Paul is bound for Rome as a prisoner to plead his case before the emperor when the ship wrecks. All reach shore safely on an unknown island, which they find out from the natives is named Malta. The natives show kindness to the strangers, building a fire for them. As Paul helps to gather wood for the fire, he is attacked by a viper, and the natives naturally presume that Paul is a murderer who is suffering divine punishment for his evil deeds. Remarkably, though, Paul flicks the viper off right into the fire, and doesn’t swell up or drop dead as the natives expected. Then the natives change their mind and decide that Paul is not a murderer, but instead a god.
“The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,” wrote that same Paul some years earlier when he wrote to the church at Rome. I wonder if his own words flashed through his mind as he heard the natives talk. All creation is in bondage to decay and darkness, and waits for someone who is not in bondage to those things, someone who is truly free. All creation is hurting, he may have written, and waits for someone who knows how to be healed. All creation is sick and desperately seeking medicine. All creation is slowly dying and desperately seeking the secret to new life. When Paul shook that viper off into the fire, the natives knew they had met someone with that secret; they knew they had met a child of God. Just so, when we display healing in our lives, we testify to the reality of God. When we live whole lives in a fragmented world, when we demonstrate emotional wholeness in our spirits and share that with others, when we take our satisfaction not in our achievements but in who God has made us to be, then we show the world something of God’s character.
posted by Michael Jordan at 6:00 AM
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