It's been a good day today. It is difficult sometimes to confront someone you care about when they are making a foolish mistake. It is easier for me to confront them if I can tell them that I've been where they are at, and have made the mistake they're making. I was able to do that today, and I felt better for having risked the anger of the person who needed to benefit from my past mistake.

Of course, I've made many mistakes in my life which have led to many a consequence. There are always consequences. The trouble is, it's often very difficult to get people to see the consequences of their chosen course, much less get them to admit that there even are consequences.

I can't think of any bigger negative consequence than to have an eternity without Jesus for having rejected Him in this life. I have told people about Jesus only to have them be offended that I would think they need a Savior. I've had people tell me that they don't believe in 'that stuff'. I've had people react with indifference to Jesus and I've had people tell me that they think that people have no such thing as a soul and that when we die, that's 'it'. Nothing else happens.

I've had more than one friend in life who told that there is no life after death. Both were tragically wrong of course, and one has already passed on and has found out that everything he came to believe about the afterlife has been turned upside down for him. He's in a place which has a reality that speaks a sorrowful truth to Him. As far as I know, the one who is still living is headed down the same path.

I've often thought about Saul of Tarsus, on the road toward Damascus, having his life turned upside down in an instant. I've wondered about this man, who had made his life's pursuit the pursuit of those of a sect who professed a faith in the radical Nazarene called Jesus the Christ Who had been crucified. Suddenly that 'radical' Nazarene, the risen Lord was speaking to Saul and he knew that every choice he had made in life had been heading him in the wrong direction. He knew suddenly, that he had been persecuting God by persecuting God's people. He knew suddenly, that he needed to change everything that he thought about the people he had been persecuting. He knew just as suddenly, that what he thought had saved him, his obedience to the law of God, was not perfect, because he harbored a murderous hatred for the people of God.

Saul also knew that his life would never be what he thought it was going to be, but because of the grace and forgiveness, the mercy of the Lord, his life would be bearable only because of the love of God. For now I can only guess at the reason he changed his name to Paul, which means, "little" or "small", I've been told. I wonder at the knowledge that great man had, to perceive over time the tremendous consequences his former path would have presented to him if God had not so remarkably intervened in his life.

I think of that when I am presented with an opportunity to "intervene" in somebody's life in a way that may allow me to be a tool, used by God to present the truth of His life-changing word to them. That is a consequence I can rejoice in.