Third Sunday of Easter: First Reading, Acts 9:1-22 

Acts 9:1-22

The ninth chapter of Acts is one of those chapters that houses a “thunderclap” encounter between God and one of His creatures. Saul, whom most of us know as “Paul” is accounted at the beginning of the chapter as “still breathing threats and mrder against the disciples of the Lord '' (9:1). Saul hated the Messiah. Saul loathed anyone who claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of Israel. And he spent his days doing something about it.

As you read the text of the First Reading this week, there are two things I would want you to find. First, that the conversion of Saul from being an opponent of God and His true followers to being in the same family, is the work of Christ first to last. And second, God loves to save. Even jerks like Saul. 

God taps a man by the name of Ananias on the shoulder in effect, and says to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying” (9:11). Being blazed from atop his animal and following a brief conversation with the risen Christ had begun to change Saul, even at this point. Saul was praying. 

I don’t want to leave our meditation without one more observation: Saul is in the bigger plan of God. God’s continued instruction to Ananias includes this: “Go, for he (Saul) is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (9:15). Saul’s conversion to Jesus is not to an idle existence, nor is it for a bare task. As Saul is given the gift of life, so his new course will be to spread that life to as many as possible. From threats to moving sinners to the King’s throne. Only God could have caused that change.