Today’s reading is Acts 28: 1-16

Today we read that Paul and his companions were shipwrecked on Malta.  Notice the change that the natives of the island had.  At first, they believed that he must have been a murderer because even though he escaped from the sea, he was bitten by a snake.  Judgment has come.  But then when he did not die, he must be a god, for he survived.  Paul was neither.  He was a man, an ordinary man, saved by God’s grace for a mission.  I think that is a trap that we can fall into. We can think too little of people or think too harshly of people.  Or we can think too highly of people, revering them to the point that they are not human.

Neither option is correct.  All people are made in God’s image, of sacred worth to God.  All people are broken and in need of redemption. No one is perfect.  Not one is trash.

We need that balanced view of other people. We need that balanced view of ourselves.

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