40acts: Ready to ActSample

Act 31: At Your Service

Ask yourself who the people are who support your everyday life – the list may be a surprisingly long one. The milkman, parcel deliverer, bus or train driver, checkout assistant, canteen worker, cleaner, bin man: it’s so easy to take them for granted. Let’s turn the spotlight on those busy in the background. Our message? We notice you, we thank you, we want to bless you.

In Acts 6, the balance of history turns, and no one notices, because it all starts with the people everyone overlooks. The story begins with the people who are pushed aside: ‘In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food."

In that room, the Hellenistic Jewish widows would have been the most taken-for-granted and overlooked people. An amazing thing occurs as the Lord, at work in the background, picks Stephen, a faithful friend – one who saw the honour and glory in the most basic, fruitless-seeming service jobs – to be the one responsible for serving them. As Stephen serves them, the spotlight of history is thrown on him. 

Right after today’s verses, he becomes front and centre at the biggest move of evangelism of the early Church, as the Spirit leads them beyond all they’ve known. But it started with his character in these verses, as he faithfully looked after the overlooked, and paid attention to the hidden people in his community. 

Who can you be a Stephen to today? How can you remember the forgotten?