Those who had been scattered...

'Read your Bible, pray every day, pray every day... and you'll grow, grow grow.' Remember that song? I used to sing that as a child, not realizing the words were/are very prophetic. The song is a payer, a proclamation: read your Bible and GROW!

Currently I am walking through the Book of Acts and I am taking my time to do so. It is not about reading a Bible book as fast as I can, but for me it is all about stopping and thinking about the scriptures I am reading. That way, traveling through the Bible becomes a real adventure. In the coming weeks I will share some of my thoughts on this blog, just for meditation purposes. I have done so before, when I took you all on a journey through the gospel of Luke. The blog posts I wrote then, were short and powerful. I hope you will find inspiration again.

This morning I was reading in the 8th chapter of Acts. It describes how persecution began against the first Christians, On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

That is bad news, for sure. Just imagine that they would come to your house and dragged you off to put you in prison. Such a horrible thought. Yet, it still happens every day in many nations around the world.

Verse 4 of the same chapter tells us how those first believers reacted to this situation, Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. Wow! The believers were being scattered throughout the land. Did they give up all hope? Did they complain about their circumstances? Did they feel sorry for themselves? NO! They made good use of the situation, they preached the good news wherever they went. They used their negative situation in a positive way. We can surely learn a good lesson from these first believers.

The question I am asking myself and you, as reader, is: how do we react to negative circumstances? Are we able to use them in a positive way?