Shade Tree Wisdom 6/6/11

A number of my classmates and I said, like many graduates do, “Let’s keep in touch”. We kept a Round Robin going for 50 years. That may be some kind of record, and if these letters were now available, they would show, I believe, the early Book of Acts being carried out.

Last Thursday was Ascension Day, and that is how the book of Acts begins, with the story of Jesus when He ascended into heaven. The last word to them was, “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth”. Acts 1,8.

When we read this Book of the history of the early Church, we must be overwhelmed by what we read. People are being changed, cowards turn into heroes, sinners are transformed. Fear, greed, and jealousy are expelled by a force something beyond normal human experience.

Our Church today might do well to listen what they were doing. They went throughout their world, and their message was not to proclaim man’s sinfulness, but that the Man Jesus, whom many had known personally, was really God’s own Son. The proof of this was Christ’s Resurrection, a shining fact to which many of them were eye witnesses. The good news was that if they believed this the Holy Spirit was there to change them. Those who believed were “Followers of The Way”.

Often our emphasis is “All have sinned, and come short.” Luke, knowing nothing of man’s depravity, simply says of Cornelius that “he was a devout man, and one that feared God. . .and gave many alms to people, and prayed to God always” 10,2. No less than an angel says, “thy payers and thine alms have come up as a memorial before God,” 10,4.

And Peter, who suddenly sees this, blurts out “Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him,” 10,34-35.

In this story of the early church, the bitterest enemies of those who knew God would be those who only thought they knew God. And that situation hasn’t changed much.

Read the Book of Acts again, and marvel at the simplicity and undeniable humility of their faith, and the result of it. “These people have turned the world upside-down” was the charge against them.

GPD 6/6/11