Pause For Respect

I have often wondered why Paul went to Arabia for several years after his conversion to Christ. There were things that struck me about it immediately and there were things that occurred to me over time.

Being knocked off of his high horse by the Lord was a spiritually pivotal, puzzling and startling experience for him. We can only guess if it was the most humbling experience he ever had. Probably was.

It is difficult to see just how Paul really could have immediately stepped into the roll of the great Christian missionary that he was, establishing churches and defending the faith at every turn right after that happened to him. He was already very smart, but he had plenty to learn.

It is a fact that when He had his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus that he was instantly distanced from his radical, former associates and the activities he shared with them. It was very unrealistic to think that he could go immediately to the people he had been persecuting and tell them that he was now joined with them in "the Way," and expect any of them to listen to him.

He wasn't wasting time in Damascus though. He went about proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues there. The Bible says that he confounded the Jews by proving that Jesus is God's Son. That is the heart of his message. But before he could expect any kind of trust from the brethren, and before he could become an effective leader, he had some hard realities to experience. One is that what a man does can follow him through the world for his entire life. It didn't matter that Paul had completely forsaken his former life. Not only were the disciples still suspicious of his motives, but his former associates in the practice of persecuting Christianity were now out to get him. (Acts 9:23) He preached for what looks to be a short time in Damascus and had to be smuggled out of the city.

His time in Jerusalem didn't go much better. The Jews there were fearful and would not believe he was truly a disciple of Christ. In Galatians 1:17 Paul says that he went to Arabia. Of what he did there I can only speculate. It is a quiet, mysterious time in Paul's life. After that few years though, his life became even more eventful than it had been before. No doubt, Paul studied during that time. No doubt, he meditated much upon the Lord. I believe that what the Lord revealed to Paul during that time must have shaped his entire ministry and life.

It is very interesting to me that there always seems to be a spiritual pause or "quiet," before something immense happens. Paul had his little pause, and look at what happened in his life after, and how the world was affected by what God did through that one man. Sure, things were happening, but we don't know what they were. It makes me think about the quiet, the unspoken several hundred years of time between the Testaments, almost as a pause out of respect, as heaven was silent, because a humble, suffering servant was coming.

More so, I think about the long pause we have been having since Jesus rose out of sight from his disciples, and how his angels said that He would come back again in this same way. If after the last pause Jesus' first visit affected the world the way it did, it is no wonder that we have been in a longer pause, because what will happen when He returns as a conquering King will astound not just the earth, but the very heavens and all that is.