Changing directions

 

As we get older, sometimes it’s hard to get moving, and it can be especially difficult to change directions if we’re going the wrong way.  Thanks be to God that He uses others in our lives to help get us moving and to help us to see clearly.

I watched a YouTube video today about a man whose son was shot by a teenager as part of a gang initiation ritual during a pizza delivery.  The gang had called in a pizza order, and when the driver showed up, the teen was told to kill him.  After the teenager was convicted of murder as an adult and received a 25-year to life sentence, the driver’s father felt compelled to meet with the teenager’s grandfather (his father was out of his life) and together they started a foundation that would hopefully help troubled youth find their way out of despair and gang-related situations.  The two older men grew to love one another as brothers and, after a while, the father even visited the teenager in prison to forgive him and offer him a job with the foundation when he had finished serving his sentence!  The experience drew each of the men—the father, the grandfather, and the reformed killer—closer to God, and all three of them now appear together in various churches and schools telling their own story, and hopefully showing the graces that God bestows on those who show compassion and mercy to their neighbor.

The YouTube video reminded me of Saint Paul’s conversion.  Few of us have dramatic experiences that change our lives in the manner of Paul.  Paul’s Damascus experience resonates in a special way as we consider how his experience with Jesus changed his life’s direction.  Paul’s youthful enthusiasm, wrought by his years of education and fueled by the approval of those in the reigning power structures within his community, took him down a path where he acted with great certainty in oppressing those who followed Jesus.  But an encounter with Jesus forced him to answer the question: “Why are you persecuting me?”  Oddly enough, Paul didn’t know who was asking this question.  Perhaps he really didn’t know what he was doing.  Or maybe the zeal with which he performed his actions blinded him [Acts 22:3-16].

When Paul learned it was Jesus, he didn’t respond with all of the arguments he had in his arsenal.  I’m a little surprised that he didn’t seek to justify his persecuting ways, as I probably would have.  Instead, he just did what Jesus told him.  We’re told that later scales fell from his eyes and he was able to see clearly.  The product of his new vision and his changed life has touched many other lives, too.

The story of Ananias [Acts 9:1-22] is just as surprising as Paul’s story.  Ananias was a faithful man who undoubtedly identified with the persecuted Christian brothers and sisters who suffered because of Paul.  If I were in Ananias’ shoes, not only would I be fearful, but I would also be plenty irate with this zealous and arrogant persecutor of my friends.  Isn’t it interesting that Ananias, who knew God’s voice, needed to ask God if He knew all the facts?  I like his honesty.  And I admire the fact that somehow Ananias was able to put all of this past aside, to the point of not only going to Paul and praying for him, but also in calling him his “brother”.  What a remarkable story of forgiveness and faithfulness!

In my own experience, forgiving often seems difficult.  Interior change is harder to begin than exterior conformity.  But sometimes simply doing something precedes or accompanies a change of heart. Ananias provides a remarkable example of cooperating with God, and in doing so he participated in God’s wondrous work in and through Paul.

May God have mercy on each of us to help us to recognize situations where we’re seeing with scales on our eyes, and to have the courage to change—even to forgive those who have trespassed against us. And may we appreciate the power of positive examples that are all around us.