Let’s try an experiment: close your eyes and think about the word church. What image comes to your mind? Is it a steeple, or a brick front? Do you see a choir loft or pulpit or baptistery? If you say the name of a church I attended, I see faces of people and hear beautiful voices. Faith Baptist Church? Frank and Lulu Gamboa. Rhein Valley Baptist Church? Jim and Ann Coxwell. Pleasant Grove? Roy Hudson and Florine Hudson, Ann and Alvin Marek. Williams Creek? Juanita Kasper, Lonnie and Joyce Watson, Dusty and Barbara Beets, Jerry and Betty Mars . . . the list goes on. All faces with beautiful voices confirming the truth of the gospel in my soul.
The darkness must have been deep for Saul mirroring the darkness in his soul. On the way to arrest Christians in Damascus, Saul saw a light and then saw nothing at all. Led by friends he sat in silence waiting. What did he do? Did he weep? Did he hope this was all a dream? Saul prayed and God interrupted his darkness with a vision of an unknown man named Ananias touching him and restoring his sight.
Not far away, God spoke to Ananias who was praying. By the way, God often speaks to us when we are praying. In prayer we answer God who always speaks first. Observing the Psalms, Eugene Peterson calls prayer, “Answering speech.” Ananias was praying and listening when God spoke and told him to go to Straight Street to talk to Saul. Shock and awe! Ananias knew Saul had come to arrest people like him. He was probably trying to lie low until the storm passed. First Ananias made an excuse, but God answered with a command. “Go.” God had already committed Ananias. So Ananias went, called him brother, touched his eyes and healed him. In our exercise, if you asked Saul, “Church in Damascus,” he would have said, “Ananias,” Church in Jerusalem, “Barnabas.” God still uses people to heal us of our self-loathing and move us forward in our walk with him. Let us so live that when others think of church, they think of us.
