Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Those Who Belong

I mentioned how last week I was reading Acts. It's funny how in Acts 9 and 10 you have two completely different stories, but both have the same theme.

Acts 9 talks about Paul, his experience haring Jesus' voice while on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians. He does a complete change and decides to promote Jesus as the Way of life. But when he gets to Jerusalem, the Christians there are weary, they had just had a friend killed for preaching about Jesus and Paul was there. But a man named Barnabas convinces the people not to look at his past but accept Paul for who he is.

Then the story changes. Acts 10 involves Peter, Jesus' right hand man and the founder of the Church. God speaks to him to go talk to a man named Cornelius, a Roman officer. Peter sees a vision from God declaring all food clean, which has a hidden meaning Peter gets that people are clean too, no matter what race or gender or whatever, they should all be able to learn about Jesus.

It's funny how two completely different stories deal with the same thing, looking at a person, then choosing not to judge them but know God loves them too. How often do we do that still, see someone not wearing the right thing at church, looking like they don't belong, maybe even not knowing how to act, and we judge them "unfit for Jesus". We're all unfit for Jesus, that's the beauty of His love...

T

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