Good morning, everyone.
Our verse for today comes from Acts 9:19, “Then Saul spent some days with the disciples at Damascus.”
If you read up on Wikipedia about Cornelius Crane Chase, better known as the actor and comedian Chevy Chase, you will find that he has quite an impressive lineage. Both of his parents were quite successful. But going back just a few generations leads to mentions of the USS Enterprise at the Battle of Midway, the multi-billion dollar Crane Company, Carnegie Hall, the Folgers coffee company, and New York City mayors. Looking a little further back uncovers ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower and were signers of the Mayflower Compact. But when you read a bit about his college life, you see that he was in a band he described as “a bad jazz band” with some college buddies, two of which were Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. And oh, by the way, Becker and Fagen just happened to go on and form the highly-acclaimed rock band Steely Dan. Chase was known by his peers to downplay or disregard his ancestry and connections, and reminds me of the bit from the old Doris Day / Clark Gable movie Teacher’s Pet. In that movie, Day is a journalism professor who occasionally references her father as a man who ran a country newspaper. Gable was a newspaper editor who valued old-school experience over classroom education regarding the newspaper business, and he thought little of Day’s methodology. That is, until he realized that the man who ran the country newspaper was a Pulitzer prize winner and part of a nationally-recognized paper, facts that Day chose to leave out.
To say that Saul spent some days at Damascus would be some kind of understatement. His days were not full of hours by the pool or time spent on holiday. Rather, the former persecutor went straight to the synagogues to preach Jesus as the Son of God to those who hated Him. He amazed his listeners and confounded the Jews who knew so much but had no understanding. He did so much more than just spend some days with the disciples. And in your times of seeming insignificance, when all seems less than it is, you can still make an impact, even if only on yourself. Giving your heart completely to Christ, regardless of the task at hand, never returns void or is dismissed by God. So go and spend some days with Jesus.
As we seek Him today, make every opportunity an opportunity with God.
Have an awesome Tuesday.
#4 Rich Holt
Dad of Ripken, Koy, TrishaJean, Samantha, Kakie Holiday and Raleigh
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.
