“When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, ‘This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.’ But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.”
Acts 28:4-6
Ever see a news headline and jump to a conclusion? Ever see a person on the street – homeless or acting a bit strange and jump to a conclusion? Ever been offended by someone and jumped to the conclusion that it was all about you? I am pretty sure that all of us have at one point or another have jumped to a conclusion about someone or something, only to find out later that we were wrong and the situation was something completely different than we’d thought. Sometimes our responses to these situations leave others jumping to conclusions about us.
In this week’s passage from the Book of Acts – sailors, soldiers, prisoners and perhaps some who had paid for passage on the ship had made it to shore safely. We have no way of knowing if the Maltese islanders could tell the good from the bad of those who washed up on their shores. What we are sure of is that they jumped to some conclusions about Paul. That snake bite set the up the first jump – they assumed that Paul must have been a murder because he survived the ship wreak only to be bitten by a poisonous snake – one that they knew should either make him very sick at best and would most likely kill him at worst. They watched waiting for him to get what was coming to one “like him.” After a while they jumped again – this time to a different extreme as they decided his survival must mean that he is a god. The reality of Paul and his survival of first the ship wreak and then the snake bite was that his life was somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Called a criminal by the government, Paul since becoming a follower of Christ had become a good man and was traveling to Rome under God’s divine protection.
What if the islanders hadn’t waited to see, what if they had acted to hasten the work of justice on the “murderer”? What if after they decided he was a god they built him an altar and offered sacrifices to him? Both could have been disastrous for Paul and for us all these generations later.
The thing for us to understand is that there is always more to the story than the conclusions we may jump to. We need to take the time to find the real story behind the headline, to discover the human being – the person that God loves – behind that face on the street, to understand that maybe that offense we took had nothing to do with us personally, we just happened to be in the way. How we respond to these situations and the people involved have the potential for making a huge positive change. Will we find a place for redemption in the headline story? Will we show that person on the street God’s love and let them know they are valued? Will we show compassion to the one who offends; because it turns out we have been through the same life storm?
Slow it down this week, seek to find the whole truth and show God’s love… don’t jump.
A Prayer
Father – thank you that we can learn so much from the lives of Your servants and the situations they faced. Help us Lord to approach every situation with open minds and hearts so that we don’t just jump to conclusions, conclusions that are often negative. Show us the truth and help us to respond in a way that draws others closer to You and Your redeeming love. In the name of Jesus – Amen.
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