Daily Bread

During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.

Today's Daily Bread is an abridged version of this week's Insight.

I love this story — a story of the Spirit prompting and leading Paul and his companions into the unknown. It is a story of heaven and earth working together and lives transformed.

Paul is completely open and obedient to God. His life is God's to direct and he will go wherever the Spirit leads and do whatever God asks of him. He had a vision of a man in Macedonia pleading with him to come, and so he responded. God prompted, but it was up to Paul how to get there, and it involved planning, tickets, travel, and accommodation. When he got there he used his initiative to go to a place where people might gather to pray and simply started chatting to people. This led him to talk with a woman called Lydia who then responded to God and became a follower of Jesus. It's a cool story!

How open are you to receiving visions from God — and by visions I mean allowing your mind to wander and to imagine or consider future possibilities?

I remember once, someone telling me they were trying to hear from God, and each time they prayed they would concentrate on emptying their mind so they could be an empty vessel ready to be filled with visions or messages. Despite doing this repeatedly, they had never had a single divinely-inspired message. I gently pointed out that perhaps God would be unable to speak through their imagination if they didn't allow themselves to imagine!

God-given visions happen when we give permission for the Spirit of God to speak to us — i.e. we open ourselves to God — and we allow ourselves to imagine how things could be in the future. We all have imaginations and all we need to do is be open to God inspiring them. Christians such as Wilberforce had to imagine a world without slavery, and Martin Luther King had to imagine a world of equal rights. We too can imagine the hungry being fed, the lonely finding companionship, the bereaved being comforted, the marginalised being upheld, the poor being supported, and the sick in body and mind being healed — because only when we imagine these things are we able to make them become a reality.

Holy God
Inspire my imagination with your divine love
that I may have visions for how things could be.
May I be open to the leading of your Spirit
and use my skills, and time, and talents
for the service of you and for others.
Now and forever