| Acts 9: 10 – 31 As is common in the Book of Acts, visions are a frequent medium for God’s self-communication. In today’s reading, God reveals himself through vision to both Ananias and Saul within the space of three short verses. This does not strike post-modern people as the most convincing form of Divine communication. Few of us have ever had a vision, and should we be recipients of one, it would likely prompt a text to our physician to inquire as to whether follow-up evaluation and medication may be required. I have had powerful dreams that have seemed to convey meaning, and I have had ecstatic experience in prayer; but I have never had a vision. |
| When I am approached by someone who shares with me that they are receiving direct, sometimes auditory communications or directives from God, or extraordinary revelations, I am on alert, wary, and rifling my mental files for highly rated local psychiatrists. This is now and that was then, I realize; and then, people perceived the texture of reality very differently than we do in 2020. Still, reading of such events gives me the squirms. How should I take this, given my own perception of reality in the 21st century? Ananias certainly squirmed when his vision from God tasks him to go pray with Saul, a powerful man with a grievance against Christians. Ananias protests to God, and God reveals that Saul is chosen for a specific purpose. With reluctance, Ananias goes to Farmacia Guadalajara, buys a box of Depends and strikes out for the Street called Straight. As Ananias prays for Saul, scales fall from Saul’s eyes, he is baptized, and, after his three-day fast, he is given something to eat. Scales fall from all our eyes periodically as we undergo the conversions and paradigm shifts essential for open-minded, curious people paying attention to the journey we are on through the months and years allocated to us. Periodically we are required to see things from a fresh angle and to change. This entails detachment from former patterns of identity, and the reconstruction of a modified self. Our identity is socially constructed to a substantial degree. Who we think we are occurs in relation to other people, our larger culture, and the important compass points of family, vocation, and our chosen and given commitments. Once the scales fall from Saul’s eyes, he immerses in the community of Faith in Damascus. The well-regarded, high-born persecutor finds himself among the persecuted; is lowered from a window in the Damascus gate in humiliating fashion, whisked off to Jerusalem where attempts are made on his life, and finally shunted off into hiding in his old home town of Tarsus in Cilicia. The way Saul previously thought of himself, all that anchored him in this world and gave him a sense of identity, is stripped away. Now he may be creatively rebuilt and given a fresh identity useful to God in the world. What deconstruction is occurring for you as your old reference points are stripped away through quarantine and an upturned world? Might this be an occasion for God to work within you to rebuild an emergent and more creative and useful self-identity? Without the deep immersion in the community of Faith available to Saul, how will you strategize to immerse in the community of Faith to the degree that you presently may, and to more intentionally immerse in that community when isolation diminishes? Grace and peace, The Reverend Canon George F. Woodward III FROM THE LITANY OF ST. AIDAN “We will keep before us the deepening and strengthening of our companions’ faith, assisting each other in meditation and prayer. May we protect each other’s times for silence. Leave me alone with God as much as may be. As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore make me an island, set apart, alone with you, God, holy to you. Then with the turning of the tide prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond, the world that rushes in on me till the waters come again and fold me back to you. Amen.” Previous Reflections may be found on the parish website StPaulSMA.com under ‘Blogs’ here. YouTube postings are available here. Previous editions of THE EPISTLE can be found here. |
| St. Paul’s Anglican Church Calzada del Cardo, 6 Centro 37700, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico 415.121.3424 www.StPaulSMA.com |