Saul’s Big Miracle
AM Psalm 107:33-43, 108:1-6(7-13) • PM Psalm 33
Hosea 11:1-9 • Acts 22:17-29 • Luke 6:27-38
I feel deeply grateful for my life in God. Does that mean all (or most) of my prayers are answered? My enemies destroyed? That everything in my little life seems ordained for some divine purpose? Not really. These commonly expressed markers of life with God are just not my personal story. And so, on some days the Psalms can annoy me with this kind of discourse.
So I thank God for the breadth of the scriptures—a breadth that includes other stories more like my own. Today, I’m relating more to Saul’s life. I grew up in a community that felt they had a very special relationship to God—and that other folks really did not. I believe God and circumstances worked on me to destroy this outrageous thinking. I am grateful for these severe mercies. At the time they were the opposite of reassuring and if they were blessings, they were upside-down ones.
But while I feel less special, I now feel buoyed up by a kind of Divine Warmth that lives at the bottom of everything (well, not everything maybe—let’s not get carried away). When I have a reaction to the bumper sticker in front of me, or my wife is frustrated with something I’ve done or didn’t do, when I pinch my finger with a tool—I can get annoyed. But seconds later, I am reminded of this Warmth. Reminded to relax into it. To listen to myself hurt or react or whatever. To listen to others hurting around me. To engage in a little moral imagination—that a driver may be having a bad day (or a bad life), that my wife may have a good point, that there are moments I misunderstand. Oddly, these feel like blessings—and they often make me laugh—God makes me laugh.
Saul, now that he is Paul, had regrets. But he speaks of his ghastly errors as if they no longer haunt him—instead he celebrates a new purpose and new love he could never have predicted. Maybe God is with each of us in the unique ways that we need.
Written by David Orth
3 weeks ago we found an abandoned/lost kitten under a car in a hot, Texas parking lot. Long story short, we are presently living inside an endless cat video.