DRIVEN BY APPETENCE and bile towards Jesus
and all who followed Him – Saul, hell-bent
went on that highway to Damascus, blinded by rage
against delinquent Jews, resolute to slay
all who professed faith in Jesus.
And then transcendent holy light – creative radiance
from the Heavenly Throne, suffused his sight
and filled his understanding of the man he loathed
so blindly, so deludedly.
And in that dazzling holy light, transforming, recreating light,
he stood before the very source of being – this Nazarene,
God robed in flesh
who spoke as no man ever spoke:
Incisive words that cut between the sinews
of the soul and spirit;
Transfiguring light that makes infant new,
the gnarled, disfigured man within;
Life-bestowing holy light that alters
both nature and name.
Two millennia have passed and here we stand this day as Paul once stood
at the Grand Theatre at Ephesus, filled with Holy Fire
shaking the gentile world with the Living Word of God.
Here we stand
distant benefactors of the call of the man from Macedonia that turned Paul eastward, led by the Holy Ghost
to set gentile lands aflame with the message of the Cross.
Dr Oliver Seet is a member of Wesley Methodist Church and a Board Director of the Metropolitan YMCA. This poem was written on a trip to Turkey.