Right now - Devotion for 5/16/07

Right Now – Devotion for 5/16/07

How many times do you find yourself in the situation where in conversation with someone they ask you to keep something in prayer? I know that as a minister it happens to me quite a bit. People will come up to me at my sons baseball games and ask me to lift someone up in prayer. I’ve overheard many others sharing prayer concerns with someone else, and the typical response is “I’ll keep them in my prayers.” But this morning as I was reading the scripture, I was reminded of something. In Acts 8:26-40, an angel speaks to Philip and tells him to get up and go to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza. Philip was told to get up and go, and that’s what he did. He did it right then, and he did not delay. He saw a chariot and he was then told by the Spirit to go up to the chariot, and so he did it. Turns out there was an Ethiopian eunuch there who was reading from Isaiah, and the Ethiopian is very confused about what he is reading – which is completely understandable. So right then Philip begins to preach Jesus Christ to him from the passage of Isaiah. Then the Ethiopian believes, and requests to be baptized, and right then they stop the chariot, get out, and he is baptized.

I’m struck this morning by the immediacy which things transpire in this passage. In this day and time, maybe it’s just me, but we rarely do things with the same urgency that we read about in this passage. Many times we take care of a few things that we know that we need to do before we head off to do something we feel called. I imagine Philip probably had an appointment or two or at least something planned that day, but when the angel told him to go, he dropped those plans and went. When the Spirit told him to go the chariot, I would imagine having hesitations – “They are going to think I’m crazy!” I imagine that when the Ethiopian had wanted to be baptized, we might have set up an appointment when we could meet later and talk more about baptism, and we would want to schedule a date so that his family be present. But in this passage, everything is done right then without hesitation. No delays, no setting up something for later. It just gets done immediately.

Back to where I started. I want to propose to you that the next time someone mentions something to you that is a prayer concern that you would ask them if you could pray with them right at that moment. It doesn’t matter where or when it happens, just as long as when someone asks you to keep something in your prayers you say to them, “Can we pray right now?” I believe if we act with the same immediacy and follow the same Spirit that Philip did, then we might see God work in the same powerful ways.