9 And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank. Acts 9:9
The saying, “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” is vividly illustrated in this account. We have a man bent on destroying the church stopped dead in his tracks, struck blind, and led by the hand to a house owned by Judas on a main thoroughfare in the city of Damascus. There he sits in silence taking no food or drink.
So Judas and others in his household, which would include Saul’s men, wait anxiously for signs of life. Believers there, if present, were certainly reticent, looking at Saul as somewhat of a coiled up hibernating venomous snake.
10 Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.”11 And the Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying, 12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.”Acts 9:10–12
At another location, the Lord taps Ananias on the shoulder to go to Saul and lay hands on him, in the good way. We learn what Saul was doing all that time—praying. We also learn that believers in the city were expecting Saul, that moles in Jerusalem had caught wind of his mandate to round up Christians.
13 But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem;14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.” Acts 9:13–14
All this behind-the-scenes activity confirms the authenticity of Saul/Paul’s calling, as he describes his experience with more detail in Galatians 1:12, “For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
May I say to some degree, we all have some sort of calling, as Paul says, “from my mother’s womb.” (Galatians 1:15) We hope we discover it in time to do some good, but this story tells us the hand of God will dramatically intercede when it’s time.
My personal experience more aligns with Philip the evangelist. A cloud of dust in the beginning, and a settling down in Caesarea to raise four children thereafter. We forget that Philip’s second chapter was just as important and perhaps more strategic than his first, for he raised four godly daughters.
On the next day we left and came to Caesarea, and entering the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, we stayed with him. 9 Now this man had four virgin daughters who were prophetesses. Acts 21:8–9
In Paul’s case, it was now time to get serious, and as we read on, he comes out of the starting gate fast.
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