I Belong

One of the first non-Jewish persons to become a follower of Jesus was a black man.

He had come from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, even though he would have understood that there were certain realities about his life that would keep him from ever truly belonging to the people called by God to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. You can read his story in Acts chapter 8 in the Bible.

True, he was a foreigner and one whose dark skin color would make him stand out in a Jewish crowd in that time and place. Those realities, however, would not keep him from going through particular purity rites that would allow him to become a proselyte to Judaism. But there was one other unchangeable reality that would always keep him from belonging to this family of God.

He was a eunuch. And because of this “blemish” (see Leviticus 21), he would always be an outsider.

Most likely he was made that way as a child because his imposed destiny was to be a servant in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia. He would never know the joy of family and would have to accept the fact that he would always be an outsider to the religious life for which he longed.

But on his way home he met Philip, one of Jesus’ friends. The man had been reading from his own personal scroll of Isaiah, and the section he was curious about would be, in a modern Bible, Isaiah chapter 53. He and Philip talked about it, and the result was that the man put his faith in Jesus and was baptized. Then Philip took off and the Ethiopian man disappeared from the story of the Bible.

I’ve thought about this man a lot. Did he really see himself differently after this encounter? What did he do when he got back home? There are legends about him, but we really don’t know any more about him than what the story in Acts offers to us.

But we can speculate about what he did on his way home. It was a long trip back to Ethiopia, and it probably would have taken a month or so by chariot to complete the trip. What would he have done to occupy himself?

He would have kept on reading.

He would move through Isaiah chapter 53, then chapter 54, chapter 55, and then to 56. In my mind I imagine that he suddenly calls out for his entourage to stop so that he can read the text more carefully, maybe away from the road where he can sit by himself.

The words would jump off the surface of the scroll as he read:

Do not let the son of the foreigner
Who has joined himself to the Lord
Speak, saying,
“The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”;
Nor let the eunuch say,
“Here I am, a dry tree.”

For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,

Even to them I will give in My house
And within My walls a place and a name
Better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
That shall not be cut off.

I see the man rolling the scroll up and gazing off toward the far horizon. And he would say to himself,

“I belong to God. My life matters.”