Saul was a real trouble maker.  He pursued the early Christians with determination, and became a true terror.  On the road to Damascus the Lord appeared to Saul and really laid it on the line.  After blindness and some serious soul searching Saul, the trouble maker, became Paul the dedicated disciple, and avid apostle.

I am no apostle but perhaps my own story will sound familiar to you. When I was four years old my father was deployed for two years with the military. My saintly mother walked each week with all of us children to church. It was just over a mile from our house to church, but my mother would load the baby into the pram and all of the older children would follow behind like a bunch of ducklings. You think I would have been tired by the time I got to church. A mile is a long way to walk when you are four years old! But it never seemed to fail that after a drink of water and about 30 seconds, I was ready for adventure.

Somehow my four year mind thought that army crawling under the pews was acceptable church behavior. Climbing the door frames also seemed completely okay. My mother’s desperate pleas and frustrated expressions went unnoticed, (it was just too much fun untying shoes laces under the pews). It wasn’t till my mother asked me to sit still and be, “as quiet a church mouse” that things began to change for me. It took a while, but people who know me know would probably never guess I was that little trouble maker army crawling under the church pews. My mother could have given up and said walking a two mile round trip just so I could embarrass her every week at church wasn’t worth it, but she persisted with love and kindness until finally I came to know the Lord.

Some of us face a child, sibling, friend, or foe and think they are such trouble makers that there is just no hope. Church on Sundays is just a nightmare, or they just don’t seem to ever want to be anything but be a trouble maker. Just keep trying, just keep praying, there is hope if we persist with love and kindness.  The Lord is ready to turn any “trouble maker” into a devoted disciple once they are ready to come to him.