JUST LIKE US

"The crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them. But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: ‘Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them.’"  (Acts 14:13b-15 NIV)

I tend to put other people on a pedestal -- people who appear to experience God and exercise their faith at a level that seems beyond my reach, people for whom God appears to be present, active, and available in ways that apparently don't apply to the rest of us. But we get ourselves (and others) into so much needless trouble when we insist on building these pedestals for people who, underneath it all, are just like us. We must resist our tendency to venerate heroes of the faith, then and now. None of these heroes were intended to be an exception; they are all meant to be an example to us of what happens when an ordinary life intersects with an extraordinary God.  

-- Priscilla Shirer in “Elijah Bible Study: Faith and Fire”

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