Acts 8:26
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road – the desert road – that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
I sat in a youth service last night and heard a young man say something brilliant (shout out to J Wil, oh yeah!). He was speaking about overcoming obstacles in life and faith, and at one point he told the students that Christianity isn’t easy. It was simple, honest, full of truth, and was a great explanation of why our faith is often so lacking. We really do, at our core, expect this walk with Jesus to be roses and butterflies.
More than likely, you’re already trying to think about how to prove that statement wrong, but I firmly believe that the cultural expectation (dare we say, demand) of ease and comfort has become so engrained in us that we can’t even see it. Words like sacrifice and cost don’t really ring true with us because we’ve placed them next to the wrong word. Instead of being willing to sacrifice “everything,” we sacrifice “something” and feel that we’ve done the Christian duty. We’re at peace with the idea that our faith might cost us something, and so we’ve convinced ourselves that we are willing for it to cost us everything. It is the call to the desert that reveals whether or not we really are.
Philip answered that call and found an amazing story waiting for him on a road that led to a desert. The Lord told him to leave Jerusalem and walk towards the desert region of Gaza, some 60 miles away. At times, I find myself in places like this, too, where it’s hard to write, to think, to move. Where it feels that every day takes you closer to a place that holds no refreshment and comfort. We’ve all been there and found the road to be hard, long, and lonely.
And yet that is exactly where Philip was supposed to be! If ever an encounter proved the perfection of God’s direction and timing, this is the one. Philip, walking towards a desert, meets a man in charge of all the queen’s gold who has just read a passage in Isaiah about Jesus, but he doesn’t know it until Philip explains it to him. Then, he tells Philip to baptize him and when he came up out of the water, Philip was gone. Gone, as in vanished, vaporized, the whole “Star Trek” thing. According to the Bible, he suddenly appeared in Azotus, which could have been 20-40 miles away. Instantly. Wow.
This whole amazing story boils down to one simple question: if the Lord tells you and I to leave what is comfortable and walk towards the desert, will we?
It may be exactly where we’ll find the next amazing thing.
