Nov 18 - Acts 13:10

will you not stop making crooked

the straight paths of the Lord?

Acts 13:10

As Paul began his missionary journeys, one of his first stops was in Cyprus.

He was opposed there by false prophets and magicians. He called them, "10 enem[ies] of righteousness."

Paul said to one -- a magician named Elymas -- that "11 the hand of the Lord [was] against [him]," and Paul prophesied that this magician would go blind.

I wonder if Paul told the magician that this could be an act of mercy.

Mercy?! Why?

Because just four chapters earlier, Paul himself was an enemy of the church, and God made Paul himself blind. And it changed Paul's life!!!

There is no indication that Elymas' blindness set the magician free (although, we are told that the local "12 proconsul saw what had happened [and] believed"). 

Paul's blindness was a blessing. Elymas' blindness appears to have been a curse. Indeed, when "11 the mist and darkness came over him ... he went about groping for someone to lead him by the hand."

Same event. Two different results. It was, in part, a matter of perspective. 

Do you tend to look at the events of life as occasions to grope in confusion or grow in faith. It is all a matter of perspective.

Some events do indeed hit us hard, but if we truly trust in the Lord's graciousness, the paths of life will be straight and bright instead of dark and crooked.

In Christ's Love,

a guy who was once truly blind

but now I see