Acts 6:8 through 8:1

Around 25 years ago my dear friends from the church, Gene and Imogene Lindsay, were being driven somewhere by their granddaughter Sabrina. They were all conversing and having a pleasant time when suddenly Gene lifted up his arms, looked toward Heaven with the sweetest smile on his face, and he was gone. I always assumed he was seeing what Stephen saw as they were preparing to stone him. Stoning is a horrible death, but Stephen’s martyrdom was the start of a new era of growth for the church. That seems to be the effect of the death of the innocent. We saw it with the death of Emmett Till and the growth of the Civil Rights movement. We’re seeing it with the death of Mahsa Amini and the eruption of protests in Iran. Stephen’s death scattered the church into new territory and it undoubtedly had a profound effect on a young man watching the crowd and “giving approval to his death,” who in his own time would suffer stoning, flogging, imprisonment and finally his own martyrdom, all for the sake of that same “Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Do you see him too?