Acts 9:3-19 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:… Look at the mighty mountain lifting its head above the clouds that do but girdle it. How proud and defiant it stands! Far up above the dusty ways of man, clothed in robes of unsullied snow, it seems the very emblem of the unchangeable. Yet every day it is being levelled. The glacier grinds the rock; the frost frets and frays it; the torrents wear away the stones and hollow out the sides. Now rocks are rent from it and go sweeping far into valleys, in turn to be ground into soil, until in time the great mountain that stood bleak and bare is spread into the golden cornfields or into the pastures that are covered with flocks, and where the homesteads look forth from the midst of the trees that screen them, and the happy people laugh and sing. Now that is what the heavenly Father is seeking to do for us by the daily discipline of life, and by the ministry of His grace. He puts Himself within reach of us that He may bring down the pride and selfishness, that He may take away the coldness and hardness, and turn us into love and service and a thousand forms of blessedness. Have faith in God. Take hold of the power of God that is in Christ Jesus that in you the mountain may be made into cornfields. Look at Saul of Tarsus. How like a mountain did he stand! How proud, how defiant, how high he carried his head! And like the mountain, too, how the black storms gathered around him, and the lightnings blazed, how the thunders lowered and crashed, and the cruel torrents roared and raged in their fury! It is a volcano that rises before us whence flow the streams of fire. But lo! there comes the grace of God. He is broken, transformed. Listen how long after he writes to the little flock to whom he had ministered: "We were gentle among you even as a nurse cherisheth her own children, so being affectionately desirous of you we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were become very dear unto us." The persecuting Saul is turned into an apostle of love. Faith has cast out the mountain and transformed it into the cornfields and pastures. Now we are to take hold of the grace of God to do like wonders within us. We have no business to talk about our nature, we have to think about the almighty power of God. (M. G. Pearse.) Parallel Verses KJV: And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: |
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