In today’s reading, Paul and Silas are still in Philippi when they are approached by a crowd. This crowd attacks them with insults along with accusing them of disturbing the peace and breaking Roman laws. As we learned previously, Paul performed an exorcism on a slave girl who had the gift of fortune-telling. As a result of the exorcism, the girl lost her ability to tell people’s fortunes. The crowd was not happy with the events that transpired and dragged both Paul and Silas to court.
From the court’s ruling, Paul and Silas are sentenced to be inflected by rods and thrown into jail. In the middle of the night, while the guard was overlooking their cell Paul and Silas prayed and praised God for suffering in the name of Jesus Christ. During this time, an earthquake occurred, causing damage to the prison and leaving the gates ajar for Paul and Silas to escape.
After the earthquake, the guard woke up and noticed the gate was open. Fearing that they escaped along with the shame and humiliation of dealing with the consequences, the jailer was prepared to take his own life. Immediately, Paul shouted out “Do no harm to yourself; we are all here.”
The guard took his light and trembling with fear, fell to his knees in front of Paul and Silas. It is here that the guard realized that both Paul and Silas were preachers of God. He then asked them “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas said in reply “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved.” The guard then took Paul and Silas into his home, cleaned up their wounds, and allowed them to preach to his family.
In this reading, we see two powerful messages that we can learn from during these difficult times. The first thing we can relate to is the suffering of Paul and Silas as they are beaten and tormented because of their faith. In the last couple of months, our lives have changed drastically. A lot of us are suffering in different ways from this pandemic, whether it would be from the loss of a loved one, losing our source of income, or even suffering from the feeling of the unknown or what lies ahead. We can all turn to God during our suffering and pray to him.
This leads me to the second message in which Paul and Silas are still praying and singing praise to God even after they have been beaten and locked away in a cell fearing the uncertainty. However, the most important thing they did not lose is their faith in God, as a result, God saved them. During this difficult time, let us keep our faith and belief in God as things will get better. We should also be strengthening our faith by helping those who have suffered a loss as a result of this pandemic. Help them believe that we will come out of this as one.
Jonathan LaCovara
Network Technician
No comments:
Post a Comment