Sent Out and Mistaken for Gods

In a city called Antioch, there was a little family of friends who loved God. They prayed together. They listened together. And one morning, while they were worshiping, God laid something gently on their hearts.

Set apart Barnabas and Saul, he said. I have a journey for them.

So the friends laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul, the way you hold someone close before they walk out the door. And they sent them off to carry the best news in all the world to people who had never once heard it.

They were carrying a name. The name of Jesus. (Saul carried it so far and so faithfully that soon everyone called him Paul.)

They walked and walked, all the way to a town called Lystra. And there, sitting in the dust, was a man whose feet had never worked, not once since the day he was born. He had never run. He had never jumped. He just sat and watched the world walk by.

But oh, how he was listening. Paul looked right at him and saw that small, brave flicker of hope deep in his eyes. And Paul said, in a loud and glad voice, Stand up on your feet!

And the man leapt up. He leapt! His feet held him. He went skipping about like a lamb in spring.

The whole town gasped. These people had been wanting a rescuer for so long, aching for one for so long, that the moment they saw something wonderful they cried, These must be gods, come down to us! They ran for flowers. They ran for bulls. They wanted to bow down and worship Paul and Barnabas.

But that would never fill the empty, aching place inside them.

When Paul and Barnabas understood, they tore their own clothes in sorrow and rushed into the crowd, calling, No, no, stop! We are only men, the same as you. Do not worship us!

Then, ever so gently, they pointed higher. Look up, they said. There is a living God, the One who made the sky and the sea and every good thing. He has never once forgotten you. He fills your tables with food and your hearts with gladness. He is the One your aching has been reaching for all along.

The people of Lystra had a hole shaped like a Savior, and only one Savior in all the world was shaped to fit it. His name was Jesus.

And the living God had already sent him. Already Jesus had come, and loved, and died, and risen again, to bring his lost and longing children home to himself.

The thing the people of Lystra had wanted for such a long, long time was not far off anymore. It had come to their dusty street, in the mouths of two travelers with torn clothes.

So Paul kept telling them the name, over and over, while the flowers wilted in their hands. And close beside him, on feet that had never once held him before, stood a man who would not stop listening.