When Life Stops – May 3, 2022

For three days [Saul] was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
Acts 9:9

When Life Stops

For a Jewish man by the name of Saul, life had suddenly stopped. He had been embracing the presumption that the followers of a crucified teacher named Jesus were all wrong about his being the promised Savior of the world. As a result, Saul had made it his mission to persecute and root out the Jesus followers wherever he could find them.

But then the risen Lord Jesus himself had confronted Saul. After that encounter, Saul was physically blind for three days. The Bible records that, during those three days, Saul did not eat or drink anything. The Bible also records that Saul spent much of that time in prayer.

What were those three days like for Saul? No doubt they were not easy. No doubt they contained for Saul some long, difficult hours of reflection; long, difficult hours of realizing how wrong he had been and how right Jesus was about everything.

When was the last time your life suddenly stopped? When was the last time it was all you could do to sit down and try to absorb something that had just happened? Was it the abrupt loss of your job? Was it the collapse of a close relationship or heartbreak in your family? Was it the diagnosis of a life-changing illness or the death of someone close to you? Or was it something else that still, somehow, put your life into a pause or a sobering picture frame? Perhaps your life is at a full stop right now.

When life stops, Jesus is there. He’s there to bless those difficult hours of seeing those things I need to see—whether it has to do with where I’ve gone wrong, what I have forgotten about the Lord’s will for my life and his promises, or what I have forgotten about my absolute dependence upon God’s grace.

He’s also there with his forgiveness. He’s also there to cleanse me in the blood from Calvary’s cross. He’s there to start my life all over again.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, when my life stops, sit with me. Move me to see what I need to see. And by your forgiveness, empower me to begin again. Amen.