Legalism blinds. (Galatians 1:11-23)

Pardon the trails off, the spirit is willing, the flesh is spent but the good kind of tired and as there was a time in my life when I was to physically broken to be the good kind of tired because stairs were a mountain to climb, it's a praise worthy moment that HE is Good to me!

Paul was struck blind on his trip to arrest believers, his zeal for his religion lead him to abuse people strike them with fear, and even take joy in their murder. Isaiah speaks of every nation coming and confessing the GOD of Israel, it is happening right before his eyes and in his blindness he killed his own kin, be it emotionally, spiritually, or physically. And YET. But GOD got in the way. HE struck Paul physically as blind as Saul spiritually was. And in one moment rectified both. The blindness and the healing, the conversation in between because YESHUA told him who HE was rather than strike him for his actions. Love like that inspires action to love, action that doesn't want its own way but loves, is patient, peaceful, kind, merciful, graceful, full of self control, fruit born of relational root. Because we long for GOD to set things right, here HE did. Saul was on a one way trip to hell, one of his own making by his own choices, taking many along with him. And GOD set his understanding right, his relationship right, his very world being and view was set right with GOD, or to put it another way, he was declared righteous, something Paul gives as examples in Abraham. What does it mean then? To be set right is to trust that YWHW is God, there is no other, that HE is Three in One, that the entire love letter is pointing, forward and backward in time to the point upon all history (literally BC to AD, or BCE and CE (always found the idea sad, common era, why not have an extraordinary era? I digress)) changed. The Cross.