“Lord Jesus, Receive My Spirit” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)

The Stoning of Stephen, by Adam Elsheimer
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“Lord Jesus, Receive My Spirit” by Melanie Rigney

Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”; and when he said this, he fell asleep. Now Saul was consenting to his execution. (Acts 7:59-60, 8:1)

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. (Psalm 31:6a)

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:35)

Piety

Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful.

Study

It’s not a quick death, stoning.

It takes about a half hour, and you get bruised and battered and bloodied. Probably, you pray for one of the first stones to knock you unconscious.

Perhaps it was Stephen’s intent that his discourse about the crowd’s failure to accept Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophecies would anger the people so much that his death would come quickly. Or perhaps he didn’t really care about that but saw those closing moments as one final evangelization opportunity. Either way, his body already damaged, he emulated Jesus’s own example on the cross and prayed for forgiveness of his persecutors.

Now, some of those in attendance likely threw stones all the harder for Stephen’s audacity to call on forgiveness for them. Some probably considered him foolish for offering up his body, when all he would have had to have done to live was to quit talking about Jesus.

But for at least one of those in attendance, Stephen’s dignity and fearlessness planted a seed. It didn’t take immediate, visible root in Saul; he would go on to persecute Christians relentlessly until that ah-ha moment on the road to Damascus. But Saul, later called Paul, never forgot his presence when the first Christian was martyred.

It’s not a quick death, being a Christian and picking up our crosses and following daily.

It takes a lifetime, and we get bruised and battered and bloodied, emotionally and mentally if not physically. But the persecution becomes easier to bear when we remember this isn’t about us, but about Him… and bringing as many people to Him as we can.

Action

The babe chicks of the 151^st Arlington Women’s Cursillo Weekend are now into their Fourth Day and have found that while they are changed, those around them aren’t. Pray for the seeds placed last weekend to take root and flower amid the persecutions they face.