Thursday

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Exodus 5:10-23
Acts 7:30-34
Have you ever faced a situation that required you to defend your faith? Have you ever argued against adversaries with profound eloquence and comprehensive historical citation? Have you ever stood before a panel of judges empowered to spare or take your life based solely on your religious conviction?
To these questions I answered yes, maybe and, thankfully, no. However this passage from Acts, in fact all of chapter seven, reminds me that more than a few of God’s saints have answered yes to all three questions.
Acts 7:30-34 recalls a portion of Saint Stephen’s impassioned defense against accusations of blasphemy against Moses, and even against God; and of speaking against the temple and the law. John Wesley writes “In answer to this accusation, rehearsing as it were the articles of his historical creed, he [Stephen] speaks of God with high reverence, and a grateful sense of a long series of acts of goodness to the Israelites, and of Moses with great respect, on account of his important and honorable (sic) employments under God: of the temple with regard, as being built to the honour (sic) of God;...”
Despite his impassioned eloquence Stephen cannot turn the anger of the priests who incite a crowd and sanction his execution by stoning. Many generations after Stephen’s martyrdom, in this time and in this place, we live in a culture where the proclamation of Christ’s Gospel does not result in an appearance before a true death panel. However, this does not mean we may lapse into a life of easy complacency.
We still must watch for the burning bushes in our lives and shed the barriers that keep us from entering God’s holy ground. Christ sends us out into the “Egypts” of this world armed only with the love God gave to our ancestors Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Stephen. In the midst of adversity, in the presence of suffering, in the face of danger and even death, through Christ and with the power of the Holy Spirit, proclaim Christ’s glory until he returns again.