The First One to Follow Him All the Way

Do you know what it feels like to do the brave thing and be hurt for it anyway?

There was a man named Stephen. His heart was so full of God that it spilled over. He fed the hungry. He told everyone about Jesus, who had died and come alive again. And when he spoke, his face seemed to shine, the way Moses' face once shone when he had stood very close to God.

But some men did not want to hear it. The truth made them angry. So they grabbed Stephen and dragged him in front of the leaders, and they told lies about him, the very same way they had told lies about Jesus.

And Stephen stood there, alone, the way Jesus once stood alone.

He could have said nothing. He could have saved himself. Instead he told them the long story of God, all the way back to the beginning. How God had been gathering his people for years and years and years. How he kept sending helpers and kept sending rescuers, and how, every single time, the people pushed them away. Every helper, every rescuer, had only ever been a small picture of the real One who was coming. And now the real One had come, and they had pushed him away too.

That made them angrier still. They ground their teeth. They covered their ears.

But Stephen wasn't looking at them anymore. He was looking up.

The sky tore open like a curtain, and there was heaven, bright and near. And there was Jesus, up on his feet.

A king sits down on his throne. But when someone he loves is coming home, the king rises and stands to welcome them in. Jesus stood up for Stephen.

"Look," Stephen said. "I see Jesus, standing, waiting for me."

Then the stones began to fall. Hard and heavy and cruel. And it hurt. It hurt so much.

But Stephen was not afraid anymore, and he was not alone anymore. With the stones still falling, he said the two bravest things a person can say.

First, to Jesus: "Receive me. I'm coming home."

And then, for the very people throwing the stones, he prayed the prayer his Master had prayed: "Don't hold this against them. Forgive them."

The very same forgiving words Jesus had said from the cross.

Stephen was the first to die the way Jesus died, and the first to forgive the way Jesus forgave, and the first to follow Jesus all the way home and find him waiting there with his arms already open.

Jesus had promised that he would never lose a single one of his children, that he would gather his family and bring every last one of them home. And here was the very first one, welcomed in.

So Stephen knelt down in the dust with heaven standing wide open above him, and he closed his eyes, and he fell asleep the way a tired child falls asleep at the end of a long day. And when he opened his eyes again, the first face he saw was the face of Jesus, still standing, still glad, saying his name.