Contemplative Bible Reading

Acts 8:1-4 (New Living Translation)

Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen.

A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. ² (Some devout men came and buried Stephen with great mourning.) ³ But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.

⁴ But the believers who were scattered preached the Good News about Jesus wherever they went.

This is the (hi)story of the scattering of Christians due to a great persecution in Jerusalem.

I call this preaching in the rat race and I find it to be a model that fits well in our current post-post-post-something-or-other-but-we’re-still-sinners-world (I think I just created something here ;-). Anyways, the followers of Jesus the Christ went here and there. What did they do here and there? They told people about Jesus the Christ. They couldn’t help themselves; they had to talk about Jesus.

We can do this today. Where ever we find ourselves in the rat race, we tell people about Jesus the Christ. Pretty simple, yet not always easy.