Verse of the Day for April 23

Saul has been blind for three days, sitting in a house on Straight Street, neither eating nor drinking. Ananias has been sent to him and has objected, reasonably, that this man arrests people like him.

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.

As it had been scales. Luke, a doctor, reaches for an approximation — whatever came off was physical enough to describe and unlike anything he had a word for.

But the blindness had a purpose. Saul was a man who had read the scriptures with total confidence and total accuracy about the wrong conclusion.

Three days without sight is a strange gift to give someone whose problem was that he was certain.

The first thing he does with the restored eyes is get baptized. The second is to start preaching the opposite of what he had come to Damascus to enforce.

Some renewals begin with being unable to see for a while, and they are not usually experienced as kindness at the time.

The man who most needed to be wrong was the one most sure he was right.