One of my favorite quotes by Rich Mullins was when he talked about how our job in life was to simply be an arrow pointing to heaven.  All of our lives should be lived out in that way, pointing others to God and to His mercy and life.

We don’t live this life for us.  It’s not for our glory. It’s for  God’s glory.

Sometimes, through, it can be hard to remember that.

We see something happen in Acts that could have really trip Paul and Barnabas up:

11When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, ‘The gods have come down to us in human form!’ Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. . . 14When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, 15’Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

I’m sure we’ve all had folks think a lot of us before, but probably haven’t had too many folks tell us that we are a god.  Paul and Barnabas had been working really hard for the Gospel.

They’d been beaten, been kicked out of towns, been locked up.

Most of the time they were despised in the towns they were in.  In many towns they had literally been run out of town.

And now, finally, someone likes them! The entire town rises up and says, hey, you’re awesome.

You’re a god!

They knew it wasn’t true. They knew they were just flesh and bone. And part of me wonders if that didn’t feel good to them, for at least once, not be stoned out of a town.

But, they remembered what they were there for, to be an arrow pointing to heaven. And they used the fame they’d acquired to talk about the Gospel.

Today, that’s our job as well. We are to point to God with all we do. All we say. All we are.  We are to use the circumstances of our lives to point to God.

There’s a lost and dying world out there, in need of hearing and seeing the love and grace of God.  And it’s our job to point it that God.

With all that we have and all that we are, may we be that arrow pointing to heaven today.