Acts Chronicles Chapter 11: The Fires Of Change

"When they heard these things they became silent;"

------------------/ Acts Chronicles Chapter 11: The Fires Of Change - The Thoughts of Peter Before Addressing the Jews Of The Circumcision


One of the hardest things to accept
in this world
is that people can change and that
those once deemed insolent and patently grotesque:
dignified luminaries
lionized and incorporated into your own core
innermost circle of friends, given the cloak off your shoulder
the spoon from your mouth
their children, the breast of your wife
and it is hesitancy
specifically the staunch restrictions you so
quickly reference
that provide pertinent prohibitive
rationale for why this new paradigm just wont, just cant
be plausible that now metamorphoses you into the enemy
you just witnessed converted
so you can experience what its like to have Jews refrain
from looking you in the eye when they speak
refusing to even barter in the market staring at your wares
with disdain
or even touch, much less dare to sit at the table you and your
family eat from.
they let your donkeys starve, your brother fall in the street
incapacitated and continue to pass by unaided (audibly groaning)
spurred by hatred
so that you finally understand that wickedness and truth
have no relation, that casual cruelty and civility
will be forever juxtaposed and not synthesized
and a man crucified on a cross
forever pitted against Barrabas
yet even he walked free, though not of his own accord
it was no mere dousing of water
washing and cleaning or dressing a flesh wound
but the Spirit of possibility of miraculous new paths
the old regenerated and become new,
a woman once spurned now sought after
a man denied enlistment now a decorated general
in war, transformed
and a belief that faulty justice theory and a
prejudiced heritage of skewed judgment can be reversed
through fire
through mercy

(just like us)


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Acts 11:1-18
Now the apostles and brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with him, saying, "You went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them!" But Peter explained it to them in order from the beginning, saying: "I was in the city of Joppa praying; and in a trance I saw a vision, an object descending like a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners; and it came to me. When I observed it intently and considered, I saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, 'Rise, Peter; kill and eat.' But I said, 'Not so, Lord! For nothing common or unclean has at any time entered my mouth.' But the voice answered me again from heaven, 'What God has cleansed you must not call common.' Now this was done three times, and all were drawn up again into heaven. At that very moment, three men stood before the house where I was, having been sent to me from Caesarea. Then the Spirit told me to go with them, doubting nothing. Moreover these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. And he told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house, who said to him, 'Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon whose surname is Peter, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved.' And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, 'John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?" When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, "Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life."