Main news for 18 December 2023

How is God's work done? Over the two-thousand-year history of the Church, more has been said and written about this than actual works of God have been done. And with all this, no one has managed to understand it exactly to this day, much less has anyone managed to create a single general theory that would describe the algorithm of divine-human interaction in history.

Why is that? One could simply answer: because the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. And that would certainly be true: God's plans are known to no one except God Himself. But the question is how God interacts with people, and here the situation is somewhat different: insofar as God includes a person in His plan, He reveals this design to him, at least in part.

The point is perhaps something else: the very quality of the relationship between God and man. If everything had been scheduled in advance with God, the situation for His servants would, perhaps, have been simpler in some respects: then it really would be possible to try to develop some classification of possible interactions, not immediately, and over a long time, but the task would be solvable in principle. But the point is that with God, it appears, only the goals are marked out in advance, while the plan for achieving them changes continually according to the developing spiritual situation, or, more simply, according to who has once again said to God another "yes" or another "no."

In any case, classifying this mosaic of possibilities and the options for their realization is, of course, completely unrealistic. What remains is only to listen and hear God, who, having set the task, will certainly indicate the one to whom it can be entrusted. This does not mean, however, that over time a new worker will not replace the former one. And the options may be completely unexpected, at times in no way corresponding to any human ideas.

Who, indeed, could have seriously considered Paul as a preacher of Christ at the time when he appeared in Damascus? Humanly speaking, the most reasonable choice would have been to keep away from him. But Ananias makes a different choice, acting as God commands him to act. And Saul the persecutor becomes Paul, the great witness of Christ and the Kingdom.

Today we read about the conversion of Saul, an event that not only turned his life upside down, but also in many ways determined the course of Christian history. Such conversions do not happen often, but they have happened and continue to happen. In essence, every person sooner or later meets God on his path. This meeting often overturns a person's consciousness in much the same way as happened with Paul. He considered himself a servant of God, but turned out to be His enemy, and the reverse was also true: he thought Jesus was his enemy, but He turned out to be his Lord, his life, his calling.

In fact, such an overturning of consciousness is called repentance (in Greek, "metanoia," a "change of mind"). When a person suddenly sees that his whole life is a persecution of Christ, which he carries out inside himself or among those near and far from him, the mercy of the persecuted Son of God is also revealed to him. He will not only accept him among His disciples, but will also lay on him a new mission: not to tear apart, but to build up Christ's Church.

The Lord had prepared a surprise for Ananias. Ananias was plainly quite ready for God to speak to him. But even he did not expect this: to go to Saul of Tarsus, about whom everyone knows that he persecutes Christians and has come to Damascus with one purpose, to root out Christianity.

Ananias is shocked. But he does not reject the vision (though he could have said: going to Saul is madness, so this is not a vision but delirium). On the other hand, he does not argue with God; he does not say, "No, Lord, I am not going anywhere." He clarifies: "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to Your saints, and here in Damascus he also wants to persecute Your Church..." In answer, the Lord does not say whether this is true or not (evidently because it is already known that it is true); He says: "Go, because I have chosen him."

And Ananias makes the only right decision: he simply goes and does what the Lord told him.