For this is what the Lord has commanded us: “ ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
Acts 13:47 (NIV)
Already Made a Light
He’s been lost an hour in a city where he can’t read the street signs. The rental bike is a size too small and the seat won’t come up. He has come past the same fruit market three times from three directions, and the man in the apron out front has looked up each time. He hasn’t stopped. He flew in for a funeral, and asking would mean saying some of that to a stranger in a language he doesn’t have.
I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. Paul and Barnabas answer with those words the people who had just turned them down. They had taken the word of God to their own people first, that crowd had turned them down, and they say so plainly before they announce they’re turning to the Gentiles. The reason they give is an order. For this is what the Lord has commanded us.
The Lord had already made these two a light for the Gentiles, and the going came out of that. They read an old command as spoken to them and moved on it there, in front of the people who had just refused them. When the Gentiles heard, they were glad and they honored the word of the Lord.
If you’ve spent years feeling behind on this, look at how it runs. God did something to these two men and told them what they now were, and what they did next came out of that, toward people who had not yet been asked. Their commission sat in a sentence older than either of them.
The man in the apron walks out to the curb, takes hold of the handlebars, and turns the bike around. He says a street name twice and points down past the church with the scaffolding on it, and the rider goes that way without having asked for any of it. The awning over the fruit market comes down for the afternoon.
A Prayer to Remember
Father, make me useful to the people I’d never have chosen. Put me where people are hearing your word for the first time, and if that turns out to be a parking lot instead of the ends of the earth, let it be there. Give the gladness to the ones who hear it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
