Tuesday, May 12, 2009

God is with His People-Acts 6

Acts 6 is an interesting little chapter. In it, one reads of the 1st church conflict and its resolution by the appointment of Greek cultured Jews as deacons. This little incident is set against the backdrop later in the same chapter of very real and serious persecution of one of the new deacons, Stephen. The contrast is illuminating. Compared with being on trial for his life, the problem he was appointed by the church to solve must seem small, as indeed it is (at least in comparison). But I think that very contrast illustrates something profoundly important, the truth that God is always with His people. In matters both comparatively small and ultimately serious, God's Spirit is always at work in both His Church as a whole and in the lives of its individual members.

That great truth encourages me a great deal. I've never been on trial for my life and don't really expect to be anytime soon. The problems of my life, such as they are, all lean more to the side of common and even ordinary than they do toward matters of life and death. So I am glad that God is in the comparatively small stuff too, because it means that Jesus really has kept His promise to be "with us always, even to the very end of the age." It also means that in the "small" things, I can learn to trust Him, remember and recognize His presence with me, so that when the "charge of the elephant" type circumstances arrive, I can have assurance that He is with me, and be able to stand.

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