Saturday, V Easter
(Acts 16)
A novel describes faith moving a woman beyond her comfort zone. Her in-laws are borderline Alzheimer’s patients. They live in a care facility so many miles from the woman’s home that she seldom sees them. But her new-found faith admonishes her that she could give them more attention. So every week she begins to take the long drive to visit them.
The Holy Spirit in the reading from Acts today seems to be moving Paul and Timothy out of their comfort zone as well. The two apostles have been on a bandwagon in Asia Minor. Their preaching and good example plant the faith in town after town. Still the world lies ahead of them with southeastern Europe the next step. The vision of the Macedonian calling Paul and company to a sea voyage to his continent certainly appears to be a sign from the Spirit.
The Acts of the Apostles takes a curious turn at this point. All of a sudden it shifts from “they” to “we.” It says, “When he had seen the vision, we sought passage to Macedonia at once, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the Good News to them.” No certain explanation can be given for this shift. Did Luke, the author, come into Paul’s company at this time? Perhaps Luke just found the “we” in some source material about Paul and left it in his own account? In any case, we can take the “we” of Acts as a call to come out of our comfort zones to put our faith into action.
