"Who are you, Lord?"

Acts 9:1-6, But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

Paul, then Saul, knew better than anyone what it meant to be an object of wrath, and he was just the man to bring it about for someone else. Later he would write about seeing the Lord as a potter who makes vessels for a particular purpose: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” As was he, a devoted Jew, a former object of wrath, so once were we: but by grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves it is the gift of God, not of works that we have nothing to boast about. Have we given thanks today for our daily bread?

We thank you for your amazing grace in Christ Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life that we might be reconciled by his perfect sacrifice!

ESV Lectionary