There he sat, an abjectly broken man. As he had traveled along the road, he had been confronted by Jesus, who had knocked him down physically, charged him with a shocking sin, and then struck him blind. As the man sat there in darkness, the words kept mercilessly echoing through his mind, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
Images kept playing across his mind—Stephen, collapsing as stone after stone thudded sickeningly against his body, Stephen praying desperately with his last breath for the forgiveness of his killers, while he, Saul of Tarsus, stood by as the Sanhedrin’s official supervisor for this judicial murder. Images of hysterical children screaming as their Christian parents were brutally dragged out of their homes by the temple police, again under his direct supervision as the Sanhedrin’s chief prosecutor—Saul of Tarsus—the man we know as the apostle Paul.
There he sat in the darkness of his divinely imposed blindness. He could still feel the course dirt and gravel of the Damascus Road under his back as he lay there stammering out that idiot’s question, “Who are you, Sir?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. I am Jesus….”
His companions from Jerusalem were terrified and confused. They had guided their stunned and blind leader into the city of Damascus and found themselves a place to stay. They put Saul into the guest room and tried to make him comfortable. But he would accept nothing—no food, no water, nothing. He wouldn’t talk. He just sat as though in deep, deep mourning. An abjectly broken man. He sat in silence.
Once he had been, he thought, the great champion and defender of God’s cause. Now, he was crushed by the truth that he was, in fact, the chief enemy of God. He must have thought that now he was suffering the just punishment for his sin. Surely death could not be long in coming. Saul of Tarsus had been a man of passionate hatred, and a man who knew all too well how to translate that hatred into effective violence. That had been how his world worked. Blessings and curses were a matter of simple transaction. Do right and receive a blessing; do wrong and receive a curse. And so, he sat silently in shame and horror and waited.
Elsewhere in the city, there was another very troubled man. His name was Ananias of Damascus, and he was troubled for very different reasons. Luke tells us that Ananias was a man devout in the Holy Spirit and of good reputation in the church. This day, he was deeply concerned because word had spread that the notorious man, Saul of Tarsus, was coming to bring suffering upon the Christians in Damascus, as he had already done in Jerusalem.
Ananias himself had not been in Jerusalem during the persecutions of Saul. But he would have known about it all too well, because, as a result of the persecutions, most all of the Christians in Jerusalem had fled the city, and many sought refuge with the Christian community in Damascus. That surely was why Saul had chosen Damascus as the first foreign city to which he would attempt to export the persecution. Ananias had heard the stories from those frightened Jerusalem refugees. He shared their rising fear when they learned that Saul and his persecution were now coming to Damascus.
Three days after he had knocked Saul down on the road into Damascus, the Lord came to Ananias in a vision. The Lord said, “Ananias.” And with breath-taking familiarity, Ananias simply replied, “Here I am, Lord.” There was no shock, no trauma, no groveling in the dirt. Ananias and God were clearly already on intimate terms. So, when the Lord spoke to him, Ananias simply said, “Yes, Lord, I’m listening. What is it that you want?”
What the Lord said next did shock Ananias. God said, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus, named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” Notice that God was so sure that Ananias would obey him that he announced it to Saul even before he had given Ananias his task. Surely, these instructions caused Ananias to gasp. As we’ve seen, Ananias didn’t need to be introduced to who this Saul of Tarsus was.
“Lord,” Ananias replied, “I have heard many reports of his man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” There is a simplicity in Ananias’s answer to God, a sort of guilelessness. He isn’t arguing with God. He isn’t even questioning God. What he says are simple statements of what he knows.
If there is a message between the lines of what Ananias says, it is simply this: “Lord, do you understand what a hard thing it is for me that you are asking me to do?” At first blush, we might be tempted to think that the emotion that Ananias is struggling with is fear, that he is afraid of Saul and of what Saul might do to him. But I don’t think fear was what Ananias was struggling with. The fear was the easy part to overcome. No, Ananias was not struggling with his fear; he was struggling with his anger, he was struggling with his revulsion and hatred toward this evil man, Saul, who had caused so much pain and suffering to Ananias’s Christian brothers and sisters. Ananias was struggling to rise to the same level of forgiveness toward Saul that God had. What Christian at that moment wouldn’t have been tempted to say, “Let that man rot in his blindness! He deserves it.”
It is evidence of God’s profound wisdom and a tribute to Ananias’s extraordinary maturity in Christ that God had chosen him for this wrenchingly difficult task. God needed an exceptional follower of Jesus to do this task. He knew that he had that in Ananias of Damascus. He only needed to give Ananias a bit more of a nudge, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument.” And at that, Ananias got up and went.
After a few inquiries, Ananias found the house. It was, I think, almost certainly the house of a Jewish man. Who else would this delegation of Jewish officials from Jerusalem have known in Damascus? There was, I’m sure, a stir of surprise when this well-known follower of Jesus appeared at the door. But everyone there was in such a state of shock that they simply showed this disciple of Jesus to where Saul was.
And what are the first words that Saul of Tarsus, this great killer of Christians, heard from this Christian man of Damascus? “Brother Saul. Brother Saul.”
These three days of dark silence, Saul had been hearing in his mind those searing words, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” For three days of mental anguish, Saul had been listening again to the screams of those Christian children torn from their parents’ arms. For three horrifying days, Saul had sat listening again and again to Stephen’s dying last words, “Forgive them Lord.” And now, this Christian man had come, laid his hands gently on Saul’s shoulders and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord–Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Like cool, fresh air wafting in to a suffocating man, like a stream of cool, soothing water easing the torments of someone lost in the desert, the healing power of the Spirit of God poured into Saul’s broken, tortured soul. The gracious acceptance of the God whom he’d persecuted, the compassionate healing of the God whose people Saul had killed, the love of God filled and restored this wretched and broken man. This is the very gospel of Christ in all its beauty and in all its power.
Now, go and be Ananias to your neighbors, no matter who they are.
© 2026 Gary A. Chorpenning
Related posts:
Bible Note #63: Zacchaeus #6–The Power of God’s Grace and Kindness
Bible Note #50: James 2:1 and “Us vs. Them” Thinking
Bible Note #48: Justice for the Weak–Ezekiel 34:11-22
Pastor Note #91: Loving our Enemies and Gospel Faithfulness
Bible Note #35: Compassion for the Weak — Job 29:14-17
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