Your personal Aeropagus

Wednesday – Acts 17: 22-23 “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

I imagine that the God Paul introduced to the Athenians in Acts 17 didn’t quite fit on the altar they had made for him. In fact, Acts 17 later tells us that “some sneered,” but others did want to hear more. They were intrigued by a God who made their other gods unnecessary and who “was not served by human hands” the way that their other gods were (through gifts of fruit and food).

I imagine that the folks who sneered in this story were the same ones who expected that they already knew what “the unknown god” would look like. When they met him, they didn’t recognize him because they simply weren’t prepared for the thing they didn’t know to be genuinely new and different. Seems like what they really expected was more of the same.

Think about your personal Areopagus. Do you have space in there for elements of God that you do not yet know or understand? If so, are they flexible? Or do you think you already know what will fill those spaces?