The Calling You Have Received

Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and after turning the minds of the people against Paul they stoned him and dragged him out of the city thinking he was dead. But while the disciples were gathered in a circle round him, Paul got up and walked back to the city... (Acts 14:19,20a)

​Since the very first time that I ever read the Book of Acts – I was probably in my mid-teens – I have always been overwhelmed by this moment. Imagine if you’d seen it; if you’d been standing in that circle around him. You’d seen the mob form; you’d seen the stones start to fly: the sickening sound of their striking Paul’s flesh; you’d watched him crumple; you’d watched the people ripping at his clothes and dragging his (you thought) corpse outside the city gates, where then, like a ragdoll, they’d thrown him into a ditch at the side of the road…
 
Moments later, he gasps.
 
Sits up.
 
Painfully, impossibly slowly, stands to his feet.
 
Then, turning around, waving away your help, reenters the city whose populace just tried to put him to death for speaking the name Jesus.
 
With moments like this, you always want to find words that best sum up the spirit and sense of exactly what’s going on; words that simply say it all. Well, I believe I’ve got them for this scene; they are words written later by Paul himself to the Ephesian church. He wrote: “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Eph. 4:1).
 
Friends, how highly do you rate “the calling you have received”?