annoyed

I’ve been a Christian a long time, and have read through the Bible for years, but sometimes I feel as if I don’t understand how God works at all. Some things I read in scripture are puzzling.

I read a story like that this morning, in Acts 16:16-18 “Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.’ She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!’ At that moment the spirit left her.”

Paul is one of the best models of faithful discipleship you can find, but this isn’t how I imagine his ministry to go. How’s this for technique: “You annoying woman, why won’t you stop helping us with our mission? Your continuous validation of our purpose and message has me so frustrated, I’m going to cure you!”

If you said “Paul met an exploited, possessed woman and freed her,” this isn’t what would leap to mind. It was a good work, but Paul sounds short-tempered and snappish, far from the example of the gentle Lamb of God he proclaimed. Yet the spirit left at the name of Jesus all the same.

I’m kind of glad to see Paul this way. Too often that’s the way I serve. I can forget that the purpose of ministry is people, and sometimes the people irritate me by not behaving as I want them to. But I still try to serve, and in the end I think they are blessed. But I’m not, at least to the extent I could have been.

God uses normal, flawed men and women for his work. Even Paul, among the best of us, had his moments. It makes me feel a little better about mine.