A Word from Acts 19

What do you think happens when "The Way of Jesus" challenges "The Way of the World"?

I ask that because in today's word from Acts 19, that's the conflict we read about. "About that time," the Bible says, "serious trouble developed in Ephesus concerning the Way. It began with Demetrius, a silversmith who had a large business manufacturing silver shrines of the Greek goddess Artemis, and who kept many craftsmen busy. He called them together, along with others employed in similar trades, and addressed them as follows: 'Gentlemen, you know that our wealth comes from this business. But as you have seen and heard, this man Paul has persuaded many people that handmade gods aren’t really gods at all.'" (19:23-26) And with their business threatened, the idol makers started a riot, in the hopes of silencing those Jesus-followers.

You see, here we have a situation in which following the way of Jesus was changing people's lives in such practical ways that it began to have an economic impact. And lest we think that could never happen in the modern world, history records a revival in Wales that happened about a hundred years ago and that forced pubs and bars to close ~ not because somebody passed laws about them ~ but because transformed hearts simply didn't want to drink any more.

So, I can't help but wonder: What "ways of the world" might change if more of us were passionately committed to the "Way of Jesus"? How many podcasts that promote hate would no longer have an audience? How many weapons makers would no longer have a market? How many websites that sell junk and promote obscenity would find that nobody bothered to visit them anymore?

Of course, all that might seem a little unlikely. But I wonder. Could we change  our small corner of the world by more fully embracing the Way of Jesus?

Well today, why don't we find out? Amen.