Week 4, April 2026, Devotion Part 2

We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…  2 Corinthians 10:5

After seeing the risen Lord on the Damascus road, Saul was blinded for three days. That is when it dawned on him that in persecuting the Church, he rose up against Jesus, the Light of the World, personally. To the astonishment or consternation of many, he emerged from the encounter as the missionary to the Gentiles. Once he showed up in Jerusalem to get acquainted with the church leaders, their mistrust in his reformation was evident. So God called on Barnabas – the son of encouragement – to befriend him.

The two traveled to Cyprus where they shared the Gospel with the proconsul Sergius Paulus. His assistant, a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, opposed them and his employer’s search for truth. It was at that pivotal junction that the former firebrand from Tarsus became transformed into the apostle with the big reputation, our “big gun” whose name rooted in Latin and Greek meant small or little. “Then Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.’ Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord” (13:4-12).  Part 2 of 2 

Comment: So, with those early detractors of “the Way” long since “out of the way,” why not “make our way” to go somewhere and say “no way” if we suspect we will find ourselves “in a bad way”?  I was unaware that the saying “my way or the highway” can relate to the long-standing tradition of marching to call-and-response songs led by a drill instructor.  Called “cadences,” they have become a staple in military bootcamps dating back to WW2.  Jonathan Michael Fleming released “Soldiers” in 2023 and even my old legs get weaponized to move purposefully.  “Just the other day I heard a drill sergeant say…You wanna be a soldier, you gotta do it my way…My way, or the highway…My way, or the doggone highway…My way’s the right way, your way’s the wrong way.”  Frank Sinatra famously crooned, “And now, the end is near / And so I face the final curtain / My friend, I’ll say it clear / I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain / I’ve lived a life that’s full / I traveled each and every highway / And more, much more than this / I did it my way.”  His daughter Tina said he hated the song for being “self-serving and self-indulgent.”  Astonishingly, it became a staple request at funerals.  Judas and Silas schooled the Gentile converts in becoming “soldiers of the cross” with these words of the Captain of their Salvation written on their hearts, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  2 Corinthians 10