Apple Garlic "Pizza"

You want this.  Trust me.  You want to try it.  A little bit of sweet, a bit of kick, some savory.  Simple.  Reminiscent of pizza (can we say comfort food)?  Healthy with apples (keep the doctor away) and garlic (a known natural antibiotic) and olive oil (cardio-vascular health), but not too heavy (it’s pretty low-fat), I run to it on days that I want to boost my immune system. 

As a first step, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. 

Then pour a few tablespoons of olive oil into a bowl.  Pull out your garlic press.  If you don’t have a garlic press, add one to your wish list now!  Use the press to squeeze two cloves of garlic into the oil.  (Dice two cloves of garlic instead, if your wish hasn’t come true yet – you’ll see why I suggest a press!) Sprinkle in some rosemary.  Set aside. 

Take two slices of bread.  Today I used some homemade “Amish White Bread” off Allrecipes.com.  I've also used hamburger buns.  You could use French bread or whichever kind of bread you have on hand, including flat breads (bake for less time if using a very thin bread).  Put the bread on a baking sheet.  No need to grease.  Spread the olive oil mixture across the tops of both pieces. 

Next add your favorite shredded cheese.  I have always used mozzarella.  Just sprinkle a thin layer across the tops of the bread. 

It is optional to add a little bit of fresh spinach leaf at this time. 

Thinly slice enough apple to cover both pieces of bread with a single layer.  Add just a bit more cheese on top of the apples. 

Place in the oven, uncovered, for ten minutes. 

Eat like an open-face sandwich (or pizza) or cut with knife and eat with a fork. 

Development credits to Amie, Christa, and Janna. 

To God be all glory.

Singles, Widows & Widowers, and Married People, Too

I have been pondering the relationship between singleness and widowhood (or widower-hood) for about a year and a half, maybe more.  Several friends have lost spouses and been willing to share bits of their post-marriage life with me.  My grandma has way less experience with singleness than I have, but entered it when my grandpa died over a year ago.  In some ways these people can mentor me.  They can look on single life with the wisdom of more years than I have.  In other ways I get to encourage them, with the perspective of someone who's had plenty of time to think about the consequences of singleness.  I can point them to finding their identity in Christ rather than in their relationships.  I can share with them that I know relationships with every other single person suddenly got more complicated.  I can pray for them as they seek God for what to do with their new-found time.  I can pray for them as they wait on God for remarriage (if that is what He is leading them to do), just as I pray for my single friends waiting for God to bring them their husbands or wives. 

 

One way or another, there is more commonality between widows and single people than between those who are married and single people.  We always-been-single people have less acute grief, but, if we desire marriage, still have a sort of long-term sadness over the years we have been alone. 

 

A year ago, teacher and author RC Sproul, Jr. lost his wife to cancer.  He's been blogging on and off about the experience since then.  Today he said this: "The wait that I have has now multiplied, because I am without her. This past year has been not just the hardest, but the slowest of my life. I wake earlier than I wish, and lie awake at night while wanting to sleep. The things I once looked forward to no longer appeal. Isn’t half the blessing of a blessing having someone with whom to share it?"  And as I read that I thought that he was well expressing something that I'm coming to understand.  Maybe he noticed it because it was a change from what he was used to, and I have not noticed it so clearly because I just gradually came into experiencing life this way. 

 

But life and waiting seem expanded because the waiting itself keeps me awake, distracts me.  Time is going slowly for me - but too fast when I look backwards.  I'm grateful my days are full.  Grateful that most of the time waiting doesn't distract me completely from living.  I'm grateful even for the earlier mornings or the later nights when I am praying about the loneliness and the waiting. 

 

I don't think that it is wrong to notice that some activities aren't as appealing when you're single.  It isn't necessarily discontent - though it could be, and it is worth guarding against! 

 

This is the life that God has given me.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!  Let us be honest about what it is and isn't.  Let us present to God the desires of our hearts.  Let us not grow weary in doing good.  Let us embrace waiting, and fully grieve things that are truly sad.  Let us celebrate the things that are true blessings! 

 

Two of my bestest friends got engaged this month.  The two friends who honored me by allowing me to be a bridesmaid in their weddings have each come to Colorado to visit recently.  These circumstances are giving me opportunity to rejoice in the blessing RC Sproul, Jr. talks about: the double blessing of sharing a blessing with someone else.  I'm the voice of "awww!" when a husband holds a door open; when a fiance chooses something that her beloved prefers even though it isn't her favorite; of celebrating the good plan of God in bringing people together and building love and unity between them.  I'm laughing and giggling and sharing with them my perspective of the value marriage has.  I know marriage is hard work, but it is a privilege.  It is a work of faith in a trustworthy God.  It is rewarding.  It is mysterious and amazing! 

 

This practice, of encouraging my almost-married and newly-wed (relatively) friends, may be rubbing off.  It may be hard for me to stop noticing love and forgiveness and cooperation and complementing gifts and servant-heartedness and fruitfulness - and pointing them out: amongst longer-married people, and between friends, and in the Church.  I'm excited!  God is revealing to me more and more that He desires His people, His image, to be recognized in our love for one another!  I pray for it and seek it and delight in it!   

 

To God be all glory.

Ladies' Christmas Tea

There’s this thing I do on Facebook pretty often.  I call it “Practicing gratitude,” where I list a whole bunch of recent things I’m thankful for.  Last Saturday this was my list: the stubborn way that human beings will choose not to wear socks for a while even when it's chilly; feeling empowered by just wrapping my hands around a warm mug or teacup; cups with straight lips; what Gene Edward Veith said and Ann Voskamp quoted: "Motherhood is a rebuke to everything gnostic, the heresy that says only ‘spiritual’ things are worthwhile… Motherhood is the perfect illustration of vocation. God has empowered a woman to be a mother, and God works with a mother to sustain that fragile life."; meeting Christmas music softly playing in the living room when I came upstairs this morning; half a dozen warm sweaters to choose from; plans to make scones tomorrow and to talk about the miracle and labor of birth; God who takes His workmanship, His poems, seriously; God who does crazy things sometimes and made us in His image – I suspect – even in that craziness.

Yes, empowered by a cup. 

A huge room full of women

talking and it's a little dark and I know faces but I realize I don't know people - and sometimes it's the reverse: I realize I do know people that I’d not spoken to in years, that I’d remembered and felt the impact of, but not related to...

And I’m at a table and I’m supposed to converse, but I’m not sure why I came or why God wanted me to come or what my friends expect of me…

And then there is tea in my cup and it is something to tinker with, to swirl the tea bag and sip to taste for sweetness or flavor, to meditate on which herbs are releasing their gifts to the water at this time and which will wait for later…

And it's kind of a shield that I hold between myself and people,

and kind of a revelation at the same time: this is me, holding tea, and this is how I treat it and what I think of it and you're holding a cup, too, and the common thing bridges us into each other's thoughts and lives and maybe even spirits.

So I don't feel small and uncertain anymore the rest of the night.  I pray while the man up front sings about Christmas.  I pray about the way the songs penetrate my friends, too.  I pray far away, about the things that always sit on my heart, and

I thank God that He is here, Jesus come to be present.

And when the "program" is complete there is a swirl of women: finding serving bowls and putting on coats and using the ladies’ room and crossing paths in hallways and marveling at snow out tall windows. 

I find it easy to smile; to open doors; to help and to not;

to look for my dish patiently; to hug a young girl I scarcely know but who seems to want to know me and I don't know why because I'm clumsy and silly and she's lovely and capable and assured;

to be thinking of others and not just about them, but of them - if that makes any sense. 

It all starts with wrapping hands around a cup and not putting it down between sips, which isn't very formal, and maybe that's what does it - that this tiny gesture is rejecting formality in the interests of sincerity and love and me choosing to be present with Jesus and with these women He has brought... wondering why He has brought...

To God be all glory.  

Asking God What to Pray

It was pretty revolutionary.  One night a few years back we were taking prayer requests at Awana, and I thought, “Why don’t I ask God what to pray?”  I could see if He included any instructions in the Bible on what to pray for.  I could also ask God to let me know.

When I studied the Bible for insights into prayer – specifically for instructions on what to pray – I discovered that God expected His people to know what He wanted them to pray. 

James holds up Elijah as an example to us of prayer.  He was a man, just like we are men and women, but he prayed and God answered, even though his prayers were for incredible things.  When I read the story James referenced, I saw that Elijah was a prophet, to whom the word of the LORD came regarding the famine.  1 Kings doesn’t even say that Elijah prayed, but that the famine would stay or go at his word!

John testifies that if we pray according to God’s will, we can have confidence that He hears us and that we have whatever we have asked.  I’m incredibly discontent with the interpretation that if in our prayers we happen to stumble upon what God wanted to do anyway, we can have confidence that God heard our prayers in doing it.  No.  I believe we can know, in at least some cases, what God’s will is, and pray for Him to bring it about.  It is in these prayers that we can have confidence. 

Again and again I see the promise that we will receive what we pray.  Jesus says that if we pray in His name, we’re assured that God will do it.  That these prayers will yield fruit.  

Now – I don’t refuse to talk to God until I know what He wants me to ask.  There are different kinds of prayer.  I like to talk to Him.  I tell Him what I’m thinking and feeling and confused about and having a hard time with.  I lay my desires before Him.  I ask Him to use my prayers, and to guide my prayers.  And He doesn’t always tell me right away what to pray.  I suspect He wants me to keep seeking Him. 

Prayer changes me.  It humbles me to come to God and confess that I need Him.  I need Him even to help me to pray.  I can’t demand of Him when He will reveal His will, or what that will shall be.  I get to offer to Him my own preferences and requests and surrender them to be changed, if they are not aligned with His will. 

At first I was just experimenting with a bright idea, asking God to tell me what to pray.  However, it’s become something that is shaping my life, enlightening my understanding of God’s relationship with His people.  It’s not something I’m just trying out or wondering; I’ve experienced it, and I believe that God has ordained for prayer to function this way. 

To God be all glory.

Day Now.

I resigned my job.  This happened over a month ago now.  For the first three weeks or so I decided not to work on discerning God’s will for my future.  I focused on God – lots and lots of praying needed to happen and partly motivated my choice to stop working two days a week.  And I focused on people. 

For three weeks now I’ve been living in November, the first month of the rest of my life when I’m supposed to be figuring out what else to do.  I’ve made some discoveries, like the need for about $90 in gas money each month or to dramatically cut back.  Friends have been in town and many will come and go from now through early January.  It is convenient to bend my schedule around others, and also to feel, by being at home, that I have time to accomplish things like dishes and laundry and cooking and other little projects here and there.  There are stacks of books waiting in my room for me to read.  Some of them are, I sense, rather important to whatever life God will call me to

Any

Day

Now.

Some friends are talking with me about what it means to LIVE in hope.  We see God working and we hope for what He will do next.  I try to keep myself open to the changes I pray for.  And we still want to live as God’s instruments right now.  We want eyes that are wide open to the work He is doing all around us, and the part He calls us to play.  How do we live content with the path God leads us on, the way God loves us, even though sometimes it feels incredibly slow or like being left behind (by everyone but God)? 

With these eyes opened to the God who grows people in His garden, I start to notice people who are un-miss-able.  They protrude into my life and I wonder what God wants me to do with them since I have no clue.  So I beg God for insight into the spiritual strengths and weaknesses of these people.  I cry out to be filled with God’s love for them.  My friends help me to understand what I see and hear and where I am failing to esteem others.

I keep on realizing so many things I have no clue about.  The times when God clearly leads me I rejoice, and I cling to those revelations with as much sightless faith as I can muster.  He faithfully provides all the assurance and help I really need to trust Him.  And I wait.  God hasn’t made everyone’s life a parable of waiting, but He keeps on blasting this theme through mine. 

To God be all glory.

Exercises in Hope

Why it’s ok to look at engagement rings and date ideas as a single girl…

You hear it, if you’re a single woman, that the secret is to be content where you are.  Marriage can be an idol, after all, and you just have to be busy forgetting that you’re a woman whose calling is to be a wife and a mom.  That way you’ll not waste your life.  That way you’ll be like everyone else.  That way you’ll convince God that He can safely give you a husband and you won’t love the man more than the Giver. 

I’ve been single long enough to be tired of hearing it.  I also don’t agree.  If it is true that God is calling me to be a wife and a mom, then it seems like I should be justified in preparing for that.  I ought to be expecting God to do what He says.  My life should reflect that future, just like a man called to missions studies the language and the gospel – or a woman called to nursing learns how to start an IV (and maybe even purchases a set of scrubs). One might compare this to the wise virgins having oil in their lamps, from Jesus' parable.  

Some days I get kind of discouraged about the whole thing.  And doing something that I would do if I knew from circumstances that I was getting married, even though circumstances aren’t showing that, is an act of faith in the invisible reality God knows about.  So it actually cheers me up to look through simple, inexpensive engagement rings and date ideas and to pick up the little useful-for-a-wedding-thing cheap at a thrift store.  It’s pretty useful to be doing things preparing for that life: read a parenting book; practice meal planning; learn better ways of communicating.  I expect to be a mom, so I can learn about pregnancy and attend a friend’s childbirth.  I expect to have a wedding, so I can brainstorm how I want the food at the reception to go. 

I wouldn’t encourage a single person to do this every day.  (Married people probably shouldn’t do such things every day either!)  I don’t want to encourage discontent.  But can we please, please believe that God will do what He says?  Can that belief affect the choices we make with our lives? 

To God be all glory. 

Praying Together

One of the reasons I love praying with people is you can hear how God is leading their prayers.  Sometimes it’s the exact thing He was leading you to pray!  And then you get goosebumps from knowing that God is communicating with you and your friends.  Plus you can have so much more confidence in receiving the things He’s leading you to ask for.  This is what I think. 

To God be all glory.  

Spaghetti - Another Short Rant

I can't believe that people are still buying spaghetti.  Don't get me wrong; I love pasta.  It's just the long skinny strings of pasta that I don't understand.  Forks and spoons alike are no match for the floppy mess.  Winding a pile of it around your fork is an exercise in frustration as the noodles are not laid out at even lengths, so that no matter what you do, a couple are dangling from your utensil ready to splatter against your chin.  Any sauce you were hoping would flavor the noodle slips right off back onto your plate, bowl, or desperate fingers.  Storage and transportation of the uncooked noodles is a nightmare, since the thin sticks will easily shatter (ever tried that trick where it's so hard to break a piece into just two pieces?).  Al dente is harder to determine than other pastas.  Leftovers get stickier.  And it's the same thing, except a different shape, from so many other pastas.  Eat more penne.  Rigatoni.  Macaroni.  Anything but spaghetti.

To God be all glory.

Responding to Spiritual Attack

I’ve been learning a lot, since June, about spiritual warfare.  God told me to focus on learning about it and practicing it.  The other day I wrote down a list of what I’ve learned to do when I recognize attacks.  I thought it might help you out.  Or you might help me out by adding to it or correcting anywhere I’ve overstepped. 

Responses To & Wards Against Spiritual Attacks:

Prayer

            Obviously there are so many kinds of prayer.  First of all, I can simply ask God for what I want or need.  Jesus truly says, “Ask and you shall receive.”  I want to try to live that, to find out the fullness of what it means.  Talking to God keeps me close to Him, keeps my perspective pointed His way.  I pray Scripture sometimes, as God leads (Ephesians 6:10-20 if I can't think of anything else).  I call out for help from the God who is mighty enough to deliver me from my enemies.  He is a shield, a help, a comfort, a refuge.  And He can guide me to the purposes He has for me – the things His enemy is trying to distract me from.  He can show me how to move past the ambush.

Thanks

            So many of the spiritual attacks come in the form of doubting God’s word and character.  Thanks remembers who God is and what He has done and what He has promised.  It names them like a claiming for my collection. 

Praise

            Praise takes thanks a step further.  It shouts to the world that my God is good.  I feel like it’s less defensive and more offensive in this spiritual battle, a tactic that has the enemy of God wishing he could avoid bringing the subject up. 

Rest

            God created rest.  It’s just a fact.  He made us to need it.  Rest is related so intimately with waiting and trust.  It is an outward submission to the fact that while I do nothing, He is able to work.  He doesn’t need me; I need Him.  And so I still my body and even sleep sometimes, committing my concerns to my good Father.

Enjoying Good Gifts

            If one of the lies is that God isn’t good, it gains power when I refuse to take the good that God gives.  He uses these gifts to refresh us and to speak to us of His love.  I have to be receiving from God.  If I am dependent on Him, it doesn’t mean that I just let Him do everything.  It doesn’t mean that I only take from Him the things I perceive as useful for the battle.  I take everything He gives.  In the midst of sorrow, if He gives laughter, I take that too.  I remember that the battle isn’t a punishment; it’s a privilege.  So I don’t act like a child pouting in time-out; I taste chocolate and dance in the yard and I thank God for His wisdom!

Encouragement

            I’m so glad that God didn’t make us to fight these spiritual battles alone.  I heard a preacher say once that God called the Church to spiritual warfare – more than He called individuals.  I haven’t figured out what that means or if I agree entirely, but I do know that the members of the body of Christ have been given gifts to build each other up for the ministries God has prepared for us.  I love it when my friends tell me they are in this with me, when they remind me of truth, when they admonish me to persevere.  Sometimes I even beg them for it. 

Prayer Together

            This one has been coming up in my thoughts a lot lately, and I feel conviction that I’m not very good at making it happen.  I believe that when we recognize spiritual warfare, we should come together to petition God together for strength, guidance, and victory.  For whatever reason, I think we’re supposed to be doing this in groups and not just alone. 

People

            Sometimes I get to be around people who aren’t aware of the battle in my life, and even that can be a bulwark against spiritual attack.  It is good to be around humans.  We minister to each other.  We are made in the image of God, objects of His love, and instruments of His righteousness.  It is good to be reminded that God is at work in lives, in situations completely unrelated to my battles.  He grows people.  He answers prayers.  He wins. 

Speaking/Writing/Remembering Truth

            When I’m in the midst of the weightiest attacks, sometimes the only things to cling to are prayer and truth.  I can start small, naming the truth I see about me: “That is a window.  Today is Thursday.”  And then I can tell myself, journal, or tell others truths I know about God.  I can remember things He did in the Bible.  I can remember what He did for me yesterday, last month, last year, or when He saved me the day I turned six.  One very important thing to remember is that God freely gave His Son to pay for my sins.  Paul springboards from that truth to asking, “Will He not with Him also freely give us all things?”  It doesn’t make sense for God to give us His most precious possession and then to hold little things back just to be mean!  The final type of truth that I focus on is who I am in Christ: “I am chosen.  I am sealed.  I am empowered.  I am loved.” 

Fasting and Self-Denial

            Mostly my experience with fasting is experimentation.  I ask God whether to fast.  I don’t understand all of how it works or why God made fasting to have power in spiritual warfare, but Jesus said it, so I believe it.  Maybe it has something to do with recognizing my dependence on God for the sustaining of my life.  I think there is something to be said for self-denial, for practicing being led by something other than the impulses of what my body or mind want.  Plus, since the body is pretty good at sending those impulses, I can use them as a reminder to focus on God and to pray. 

Obedience

            The Bible warns me to take heed lest I am also tempted, when I’m pro-actively engaged in the spiritual battle.  So I regularly evaluate whether I’m being obedient.  How have I failed to do what I know God wants me to?  I put on the breastplate of righteousness, believing that pursuing good works God has called me to puts me in the places where He can readily use me to intercede for others.  When I am obedient, I am not so distracted with repenting – and I am not fighting to regain the foothold I had given over to the Devil.  But I also remember that my God is merciful.  When I fall, I cry out to Him and He forgives.  His grace strengthens me for obedience; it isn’t something I do apart from Him and then bring myself before Him well-armored in my own good works and strength.  Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.  I have to let it be Him working in me. 

Reading and Hearing Truth

            I want my mind to be saturated with truth so much that it can’t even hear the lies of the Devil.  I want to be so confident in the truth that deceits are easily identified and turned back.  So I read the Bible, read books about factual things, listen to Christian lectures or good Christian music. 

Work

            Rest is important, but so is staying busy.  The last thing I need is down time when my prayers are exhausted and I’m bored and the temptation comes to chase after my own pleasure.  Work is therapeutic.  It is a taking-back from the chaos, a living out of the dominion God called the first Man and Woman to.  In a way, that’s the same thing happening in spiritual warfare. 

Calling On Jesus’ Name

            This one is potent.  If I feel strongly oppressed, I need to speak Jesus’ name aloud, to claim the authority of the King of Kings to fight this battle for me.  It’s also pretty potent before God.  If I’m confident enough that my prayer is for Jesus’ sake, for bearing fruit in His kingdom, I present my supplications in Jesus’ name.  And Jesus promised that whatever we ask the Father in His name, we can have confidence that we have from Him.  This is another form of acknowledging the truth of God’s promises.

Rebuking Demons

            Sometimes I need to take seriously that there are personal creatures scheming against me and that they do not have authority to oppose me, because I am a chosen ambassador of God in the world.  I openly resist the Devil, and trust that the Bible is true when it says “He will flee from you.”  I don’t know how long it lasts, or exactly how this works, but I try it because it is taught in Scripture.

Prayer For Others

            The spiritual battle does not just affect individuals, so I pray for others potentially involved to be guarded against the schemes, temptations, and opposition of our spiritual enemy.  I pray for them to put on and take up the armor of God, being strengthened with His might.  I pray for them to be vigilant.  I pray that God would hedge their families, their health, their jobs, their travel – and anything else that seems relevant or that God leads me to pray for them.  I pray that they will be in right standing with God, repentant of sins and practicing righteousness.  Intercession is one more thing that I think the spiritual warfare is opposing in the first place, so to go forward doing it seems to me a good idea in resisting the attacks. 

Attention to God’s Works

            Like remembering what God has done in the past, and being around people in whom God is active at present, I can look around me right now and observe the wise and powerful works of God.  These things don’t have to be spiritual, though sometimes they are.  I gain encouragement watching God change the seasons, open up wildflowers, bring a bee buzzing by.  I watch Him move the hearts of “kings.”  This isn’t quite the same as praise or thanks, because it precedes them.  First I slow down and give heed to what God is doing – I set out looking for it. 

To God be all glory. 

Kicking

My favorite Bible story these days is about Saul of Tarsus.  He’s the villain of the story. And the hero, though rather a passive one.  

The Christian Church is just getting started.  People are learning to pray together and preach the gospel boldly and see some miracles happen.  But Saul has been trained to be a Pharisee, and they know the rules, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is not so big on rules.  Plus Jesus claimed to be God, something Saul didn’t approve of.  He knew the chief priests were on his side, so he decided to do something about it.  Executing Stephen for blasphemy had seemed to him to be a huge success; now the Christians were on the run, and with a bit more pressure, the whole blasphemous sect might be a thing of the past.  After acquiring official sanction from the Jewish leaders, he started hunting down the Christians. 

But I think he knew better.  He’d studied the Scriptures.  He’d probably been around enough to at least hear of – if not personally witness some of Jesus’ miracles.  There was part of him that wanted God to be pleased with him.  He really believed in God.  A testimony like Stephen’s as he was dying doesn’t go without effect.  So he was zealous, and he was pushing forward in something that seemed godly to him, something he thought would be especially pleasing to God, something that, unfortunately for Saul, wasn’t God’s idea.  I suspect that there was some pretty intense spiritual warfare assembled, to discourage Saul from the calling God had yet to communicate to him. 

And my favorite part is coming up here.  God was merciful to Saul.  Not only merciful; He had big plans for Saul.  Even Saul tracking down God’s elect to imprison them or worse wasn’t enough to keep God from accomplishing the ministry He intended through Saul.  In the Bible we see God doing lots of different things to people displeasing Him.  Sometimes He sends them prophets.  Sometimes He just has the earth open up and swallow them.  Or they die more natural deaths.  He spoke personally to Moses about His displeasure.  A lot of people in rebellion against God just continue on their wicked path, accumulating judgment for themselves.  Here we see that God took some drastic measures to bring Saul to Himself. 

Saul is on the road between cities.  He has a few companions to help him with the Christian round-up.  But a light stops them in their path.  A loud noise frightens all of them.  Saul is literally blinded by the light, but he hears words.  “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?  It is hard for you to kick against the goads!”  Basically the God of the universe is speaking to him from heaven, and he’s using his name.  That’s pretty special.  Then he asks him a question – one of the gentlest things He could do.  It also implies that maybe if Saul had stopped to think about it before, he could have figured out that he was persecuting the Son of God.  Finally one of my favorite lines, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”  From what I can tell, God had been prodding Saul in one direction, and by chasing down Christians, by resisting the gospel of Jesus Christ, he had been resisting that guidance.  But God still nails him on it!  There seems to be so much firm tenderness in that sentence, that I just can’t get over it! 

And the end of the story is that Saul was convinced.  (I don’t know what it would have taken if being blinded by a heavenly flash and hearing the voice of God out loud didn’t work to wake Saul up!)  A few days later God persuades one of His other vessels, the prophet Ananias, to heal Saul’s blindness and to see that he receives the Holy Spirit.  Thus begins the ministry of the Apostle Paul (his Greek name he soon started to go by). 

Isn’t that a fantastic story? 

To God be all glory.