“Israel’s dead end is not the end of the road for God.” So wrote Martin Franzmann examining St. Paul’s grief that so many of his fellow Jews had rejected Jesus (Romans, 209)
It’s a great thought. Your “dead end is not the end of the road for God.” When Herod was persecuting the first Christians, he killed James and had Peter thrown into jail. An angel came in the middle of the night and set Peter free (Acts 12:1-7). When Paul and Silas were in prison, an earthquake at midnight set them free (Acts 16:25-27). You might tell of miraculous ways God brought you through an apparent dead end. Still, James was martyred, Peter and Paul eventually too. Sooner or later the road seems to end.
The understandable temptation is to despair, to give up hope, to give up trust in God. Apparent dead ends are a First Commandment challenge that need Spirit-given hope in God’s words of promise. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And when death itself draws near, the road of trust in Jesus leads through the valley of the shadow (Psalm 23:4). Our failure to see a way forward doesn’t exhaust the avenues of God.
Paul saw the conversion of Gentiles as an incentive for his people to find mercy in Jesus. Whether perplexing theological problems or our mundane problems, faith in Christ knows the “dead end is not the end of the road for God.”
Comments