Signs and Wonders

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance…Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles….so that the people even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them…And gazing at Stephen, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel…But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God…The Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands…An angel of the Lord said to Philip…And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more…” Select scripture from Acts 2-8.

I read all of this today from Acts. I got to thinking, mulling over what it must have been like to have lived during this phase. I’m trying to immerse myself in the faith, in the emotion, in the thought-processes that must have been going on at this time. And now I’m wondering what it would be like to have all of these signs and wonders, all of these people and their great faith transplanted into our culture. Picture it- Philip comes up to you while you’re reading something really difficult to grasp from the Bible. You’re confused, perplexed and delighted to find someone so eager to help break the words down for you. He adequately explains the passage; you get so excited about Jesus that you immediately want to be baptized (without the church class). You stop by the side of the road, get out and he dunks you (a non-ordained, uneducated person). Then, if that’s not enough, he’s gone, like gone, gone. The Spirit carries him away.

I find myself thinking how it would go over if someone were carried away by the Spirit in our culture. I think people would be screaming voodoo, witch or something black magic, not ‘neat, the Holy Spirit!’ I think about how many times I’ve needed to literally be two places at one time. I think I’d use this passage as a punch line more than I’m prone to actually attempt to wrap my mind around the circumference, as well as the sincerity and reality of these words. Something like, “Gee, it’d sure be nice to be Philip right now and disappear from one place, landing in the exact spot, the exact time I need to be in the next….” No really, can you imagine it actually happening in our world? Can you imagine an angel speaking directly to someone, telling them to go somewhere particular? Can you picture a man nowadays so powerful and mighty, performing so many signs and wonders that people wanted to touch even his shadow? I think people in 2009 would freak out- and not in a good way. I think most Christians would freak out too.

We say we want a mighty God. We say we want an all powerful deity that reigns supremely. We say we want a God that knows all things, has authority over all things, that makes miracles happen, but do we really? I think one of the saddest things about my generation and the world today is that we don’t spend time sitting in passages like these from acts. We don’t spend time glimpsing what it felt like to be Jesus- to be humiliated for a cause so great. We don’t spend time knowing scripture, figuring it out and unlocking more knowledge and power. We take the cookie cutter Christian life, we take what other people tell us about it, we read the best sellers and we think that’s pretty much all there is to it. We miss out on the authentic Christ, the authentic God, the authentic Spirit and settle for hearsay that truthfully always makes you question whether the bandwagon your on is actually real, is actually going to turn up true. I think it's because sadly a lot of us aren't on the authentic road and therefore that life is coming up short of the awe-inspiring one you thought you might have as a Christian. We've got to read the Bible, we've got to know what's in there so we know what we're getting ourselves into and what God actually exists.