James 24:7

Here's something to discuss with your friends....

You are a eunuch, an Ethiopian, the Greenspan of Ethiopia, a numbers guy who keeps the books for Candace, the queen of Ethiopia. 

You are a convert to Judaism.  You have been to Jerusalem to worship.  You were not able to get too close to the Temple.  You are a eunuch and cannot be a part of the assembly.

You are parked in a rest stop on miles and miles of miles and miles of desert road over in Gaza.   

Your horse, hot from pulling your chariot, faces toward home.  Your driver has slipped off into the bushes to relieve himself.

You are struck by the quiet.  You look up the road and down the road and see no one.

You reach into your things and retrieve the scroll you picked up in Jerusalem.  You scan it. 

You pick a text and read:

"Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him.  Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth."

Suddenly you hear the thump of footsteps rapidly approaching.  You look up from the text and see a man running toward you.  He stops beside your chariot and breathlessly asks:

"Do you understand what you are reading?"

What would you think?  How would you explain this event, this stopping on a desert road, the choice of this text, this breathless Jew-from-out-of-nowhere asking you if you understand the words you read?

(Acts 8:26-33)

Also...check out my latest book review (click over in the left column)...Marilyn Johnson's book called The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries is an epiphany of an epiphany of an epiphany of an epiphany.