When handkerchiefs or cloths that had touched Paul’s skin
were placed on sick people, they were healed of their diseases,
and any evil spirits within them came out.
Acts 19:12
Every Thursday in the seven-week season of Easter will find us moving about in the world of the early church. We do this by reading from the Book of Acts. Why is this a good time to be doing this? Let me tell you.
Think of it this way. Jesus’s Resurrection means much more than Jesus of Nazareth coming back to life. The Resurrection is much greater than that. The arms of Jesus were stretched out on the cross to embrace you and me in the salvation that Jesus offered to us; they are now stretched out to us through the church, sharing with us the kind of life that Jesus is living now in the Resurrection.
St. Luke sees his book of Acts as continuing in the Church what Jesus was doing in the Gospel: loving, healing and believing in God’s power. Power: that’s what we read about in Acts!
What kind of life is that? It’s the life unleashed for us in the Holy Spirit! It’s the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life and mine and in the whole church.
These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook. You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or table!. Click here to visit the website for more information.
The Bible Through the Seasons 