At the beginning of August, it was my turn to speak on Sunday morning at our church. We have been going through the book of Acts and I had chapters 22 and 23 to deal with.

I enjoyed getting into the text, into the two main characters who appeared in these two chapters: Ananias and Paul.

I admire Ananias, as I do John the Baptist, two individuals who took second place but by their mere obedience prepared the way for something much bigger. Ananias only appears twice in the Book of Acts, first when the Lord asks him to go and pray for Saul, who will become Paul and then when Paul himself recalls the event.

I love Ananias’s candid relationship with the Lord, the way he gently argues about the task which he has been asked to do. However difficult, Ananias obeyed. He was available; he wrestled but he was able to see the bigger picture. We don’t know anything more about Ananias as he is not mentioned again in the Book of Acts but his readiness to do what he was asked to do changed the future of missions.

In contrast with Ananias, who is described as a godly man, we have Paul with a different past, a persecutor of Jesus’ followers with the conviction that he had to eliminate them, until he meets Jesus.

Paul, in contrast to Ananias, was a well educated man, with knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. God used his upbringing, his education, his religious training, his zealous personality, even the terrible acts he committed for the task of bringing the Gospel to one of the most powerful empires in the world.

I wonder how many of us think that what God has done in us, our own upbringing, our education, our jobs, our joys and our hurts, our successes and our failures can be instruments to bring others closer to Jesus?

I like the saying which goes: “With Jesus nothing is wasted”.

Each one of us, in whatever place God has put us (office, home, relationships, minding children, college), can be a seed which blooms and transforms society. The Holy Spirit is the same, giving us the wisdom, the gentleness, the strength which we need for every situation we face, even in these days when everything seems to be bleak and fractured.

Eugene Peterson puts it beautifully in his translation of 2 Corinthians 4:7 –

“We carry this precious MESSAGE around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.”

Mission is done when we see our own lives, as ordinary as they might be, as means by which the Kingdom of God becomes a reality for those around us.

A few days ago, I was listening to an interview with David Brooks, a journalist, who used to write for The New York Times and now for The Atlantic. He was raised as a Jew and later in life became a Jesus’ follower. He talked about cultural changes and this is what he said:

“Cultural changes take place, when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy it. That is the story of the early church. Twelve guys found a better way to live and others said: “I find that attractive.” Cultural changes are not through persuasion but admiration.”

I believe that the more we work with Jesus, the more we learn His ways in our lives that we, by God’s grace, can become people who others might want to imitate.

My friend Trevor Hudson uses a quote which I have found very helpful because it gives my life, your life, a bigger scope. Our horizons get extended if we live thinking like this.

“God sends each person into this world with a special message to deliver, with a special song to sing for others, with a special act of love to bestow.”

Wherever we find ourselves these days, let’s learn to sing our unique song as followers of Jesus, in a world that has forgotten what music is like. Amen.

The thoughts and views expressed in this are the author’s own. Artwork by Ana Mullan.