And Saul approved of their killing him.

Chilling.

I often forget that Paul, the great evangelist, church planter and author of much of the New Testament, launched his career at the murder of Steven. The stoning of Steven (not stoned in the one-toke-over-the-line sense, but in the smashed-in-the-skull-with-rocks sense), propelled Saul into a spree of violence and bloodshed.

Saul began to destroy the church.

Compare Saul with a modern day Muslim extremist. Saul would have been comfortable with the beheading of Christians. He would have approved of their violent death, just like he did with Stephen. And which is a worse way to die – stoning or decapitation? Saul smiled at the violence.

I know a conversion appears later. But for Saul and those gentle people he whipped and beat and threw into prison, nothing seemed more impossible.

Which is why I must remember that the Lord grabs who he will. Like Saul, no one is beyond his reach. In my experience, the most vocally opposed to the Lord are often closer to a conversion than seems possible. They think about God and wrestle with God, and God expands into those spaces.

Saul’s story helps me remember that the Lord is never far away, even from the violent destroyers of the church.

Acts 7 in week sixteen of reading the Bible cover to cover

The Stoning of Saint Stephen by Rembrandt, 1625