Read: Acts 13:26-33
Today’s passage is an extract from the account of Saint Paul’s first missionary journey. He was in Pisidian Antioch, where he was outlining to a gentile gathering how Jesus had been treated. Quoting Isaiah (53:1-4), he explained that people who had been promised a deliverer despised him when he came. The Sanhedrin had no power to implement the death penalty, so they asked the Romans to execute Jesus for them. And yet (Acts 13:30), ‘God raised him from the dead’.
One of my more recent developments appears to be a habit of taking the wrong position on big roundabouts that I do not know well. I usually have three choices: i) cause an accident; ii) get forced down the wrong road; or iii) go round again. Accidents are to be avoided, going round again is safe but sometimes impossible, which leaves the wrong road. It can be infuriating to drive several miles in the wrong direction on a motorway or end up in heavy traffic when taking the correct exit would have avoided it.
Our two-year-old grandson envisaged gridlock and an accident one morning when he was playing, and he gave me the perfect illustration for this. The authorities tried everything they could to block Jesus’s road and finally thought they had driven him beyond the point of no return. Indeed, he disappeared for a short spell, but then he was back again.
In our lives, do we sometimes despair about our wrong choices while forgetting that it is rare to be unable to get back again to the right place? The point of the resurrection for our individual predicaments is that Jesus is always there for us and with us, showing us how to turn round even when we are going in completely the wrong direction. The grace of God ensures that we do not go beyond the point of no return.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, when we make our biggest mistakes and all seems hopeless, show us how to come back again and return to the right course. Thank you for your ‘amazing grace’ that is available so we do not go beyond the point of no return in our frailty and sin. Praise be that you raised Jesus from the dead. Amen.