We read in the Bible about an experience that happened long ago to a man named Saul. Saul had set out on a journey to the city of Damascus. He started as one kind of person, and ended up as a very different one. Listen to his own words: “Then, on the Damascus Road, he, who had set me apart before I was born, called me through his grace.” It was such a dramatic transformation that he even changed his name because of it — from Saul to Paul.
Somewhere out there on the Damascus Road, Paul remembered something which he had forgotten. He found something which he had lost. He found, or should I say, was found by, grace. It was there that Paul reclaimed his lost birthright. He discovered how much he had been loved by God in Jesus Christ. The Lord said to Paul, “Rise, stand upon your feet.”
The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that if there is one thing which unites us all, is is our forgetting, our overlooking how much we have been loved. For most of us, our biggest problem is not what we have done or failed to do, not what we have believed or failed to believe, but simply that we have not remembered with how great a love we have been loved.
What Paul discovered is what happens to all of us at some point in our lives. In our younger years we begin to form questions about our own existence — fearful questions about life and death, meaning and purpose. But something begins to take shape within us: for some, like Paul, it happens suddenly. For others, like myself, it happens gradually. But for most of us, it happens: when we come to understand that Jesus Christ is the answer to all these questions. He is the answer that stands.
