In a delightful children’s book, Judith Viorst details Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Do you ever feel like Alexander? Have you ever had a long day? I know. I know. They each come with 24 hours. No more. No less. But some days seem a lot longer than others.
Paul must have had a long day. After healing a lame man, he and Barnabas were lauded by the locals as gods. This grieved them greatly. They tore their clothes and corrected the misunderstanding. Perhaps they remembered what happened to Herod when he let the rumors of his divinity go uncontested (Acts 12:22-23). More likely their holy heritage of monotheism made the crowd’s response unthinkable. Right after they convinced the locals they were only human, a group from another city stoned Paul and left him for dead. Wait. What?
It is hard for a leader to know whether the people are following him or chasing him out of town. Paul experienced both on the same day. How do we make it through long days? Like Paul, we keep our focus on pleasing the Audience of One. What people think is not nearly as important as what God thinks. Second, we keep the main thing the main thing. Healing was not Paul’s primary work. The gospel was. So when he realized the rocks had not killed him, he stood up, brushed himself off, and went back to work.
One difficulty with difficulties is the way they make us think about quitting. Not Paul and Barnabas, though. They left for Derbe, won a large number of disciples, and then went back through those same towns and strengthened the disciples.
No matter how long a bad day lasts, the rising of the sun reminds us that our work is not done. God is not finished with us. Paul put it this way in his letter to the Philippians, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
