"Peter and John went to the Temple one afternoon to take part in the three o’clock prayer service. 2As they approached the Temple, a man lame from birth was being carried in. Each day he was put beside the Temple gate, the one called the Beautiful Gate, so he could beg from the people going into the Temple" (Acts 3:1-2, NLT) Yesterday under the topic "Get Ready to Go Up", we dealt on how going to the Temple at the hour of prayer meant "going up". But what you didn't know is that I saved the best part of that lesson for today. Today we are going to see what happened when Peter and John went up and we are going to see how standing out can mean so much! How a little effort on your part to toe the unpopular right path can result in amazing outcomes. Today, we are looking into the actions of the man who sat at the gate called Beautiful!.
Believe me I have heard so many people preach about the man that begged alms at the Beautiful gate. I have heard such wonderful topics like: "Ugly Situation at the Beautiful Gate", "An Error of Circumstance - Ugliness at a place of Beauty", etc. But what most people fail to realise is that the message here is not that an ugly situation was found at the beautiful gatel but that a man with an ugly situation had the nerve, the audacity, the faith to sit at a beautiful gate!
Beggars are usually known to sit together in packs. And when the do, they usually look for the dirtiest part of the road and sit together. They usually find some sort of comfort in sharing their misery together. Misery loves company, I have heard of that! But most times in life, the more you hang around people suffering from what you are suffering, the greater the tendency that you will never recover from it. Most poor people only befriend other poor people. Most uneducated people find comfort and safety in limiting their social circle to other uneducated people. Sometimes hanging around people better than you makes you feel inferior, so as a solution - most people carry their ugly sitiuations and look for ugly gates and sit with other ugly people. But the man in Acts 3 was different. He had a different mentality, a winning mindset and that was why he got his healing!
I could imagine as he was being carried away every day, he would tell the people carrying him "Please don't take me to the ugly side where other beggars are. Take me to the beautiful gate. I want to be beautiful! I want to stand out" The reason Peter and John were attracted to the man was because, he was the only beggar sitting at the beautiful gate. Other beggars stayed on the ugly side. So, naturally people avoided them!
To be continued...