On one road together

Philip’s Story (Act 8: 27-28)

Turns out you can’t put this work into boxes. They hired me as a waiter. One of the food logistics team. The leaders were finding it difficult to balance preaching with the community needs, so they chose me and Stephen to look after food. But nothing stays neat, not when God is involved.

It started with Stephen. Something woke inside him, and soon, he was telling stories. We tried to tell him that wasn’t his job, but Mary laughed like she does and reminded us no one can predict what God is going to do. She said there would always be new things afoot when it came to God. God calls and we go. We do the work we’re given. We stay open and the Lord will fill the world.

Which sounds easy, but it isn’t. When Stephen was arrested then killed, we knew a hard road was coming, but that didn’t make it easier. Then I found I, too, was given words, and Peter said I was being equipped because it was time for us to part ways. I went to Samaria and fell in love with the hills. There’s a real freshness to the air there that makes me feel alive. When I first arrived, I expected a humble gathering, something manageable, but Mary would have laughed again because as soon as I started telling stories, the whole city was on my doorstep. Crowds turned away from the temple-lined acropolis and came to hear what I had to say. I found courage – God granted me that – and the right words to reach the people. In time, Peter and John came up from Jerusalem to confirm what I preached. They baptised with the Spirit, and all was so very, very well.

But now I’m here on the wilderness road, confused and heading south again. Mary was right. God isn’t neat. When the angel called, I never imagined this dust or the speed of the chariots, the hard words to the animals. No one wants to talk. I haven’t a clue why I’m here.

A chariot passes me, and I hear the angel’s voice again, sharp like birdsong, so I follow and run along beside. There’s a man sitting reading, his voice high and strange, his face beautiful. Ethiopian, I think, from the land of the beautiful people. He looks like an important official, and wears the symbols of the royal eunuch, so he’s also unclean. I can’t fathom what he was doing in Jerusalem. Who would have welcomed him there?

He is reading from Isaiah’s words. Feeling like a fool, I ask if he understands.

“How can I unless someone explains it to me? Can you?”

I nod. “I think so. If the Lord will assist me.” I hope the angel speaks again because I am grasping at straws.

The chariot stops, and the official beckons, holding out the scroll so that I can read.

“Is this about himself or someone else? I cannot but feel that it is about the Teacher,” he says, with strength. “The one the people in Jerusalem are calling the Christ.”

“Yes,” I say, my heart now full. “Yes, I believe so. The Risen Christ is appearing everywhere. Even in our very oldest words.”

“I am trying to understand,” the eunuch says, and I watch his face as he speaks. His eyes are curious and kind, and he tilts his head as he meets my eye, open to my words. “I am trying.”

“Me, too,” I say. And the Lord will help us.”

Hired as a waiter, here I am again, serving the hungry. The rich and the hungry. The powerful and the outcast. The eunuch and the fruitful and the worn and weary travellers. His word will feed us all.