Acts 13-15

Barnabas and Paul began their first mission trip in Barnabas' home land of Cyprus. In Paphos they encounter a Jew named Elymas. I wonder if Paul caught a glimpse of Saul of Tarsus in this stubborn man who strongly refused to to bent to the Gospel message? I've often felt that Paul's words to Elymas were full of anger and frustration, but scripture indicates that his heart, and surely his voice, was full of God's Holy Spirit. So now I hear Paul's word with a touch of parental concern as he identifies the four traits in Elymas' life that needed to change. Perhaps Paul was thinking back to the day more than two decades earlier when he himself kept trying to the Lord's truths into lies. Maybe God reminded Paul of the fruit of his three days of blindness. How the scales had helped Paul to see the light of Jesus. So the lesson Elymas needed to "see" was the same one Saul had learned on his path to becoming Paul. Scripture doesn't tell us whether Elymas repented and turned to Jesus, but Sergius Paulus responded.
Stuart