Paul 1.9

Those with me didn't know what was happening. They heard a sound like thunder and saw a blinding light, but were in confusion. They helped me into the city, where I fasted and prayed for three days in my blindness.

Then a man named Ananias showed up at my house. He was a follower of the Way and God had showed him to me in a vision. I was amazed at how bold he was to come, knowing that I had come to Damascus to arrest people like him.

He laid his hands on me and prayed to the Lord for me to receive the Holy Spirit and get my sight back. Suddenly, it was like scales fell off my eyes. Just as quickly as I had lost my sight I could see again.

What was even more amazing was the sense I suddenly had that I was truly a child of God. I had never questioned that I was before. After all, I was an Israelite, from the tribe of Benjamin. I was one of God's chosen people.

But now I had a sense of God's power inside me like I had never known before. I felt different. I had kept the Law before to be sure. The traditions of my fathers had laid out the rules for how to keep the Law so concretely that a person could keep it perfectly.

But I had not known what it might mean to have the Law written on my heart, to have the Law on the inside as well as the outside.

Ananias then told me that I must be baptized with water. Of course I had undergone many ceremonial baptisms for purity over the years, but this one was different. I would never need to be baptized again after this time.

Ananias sent a servant to gather several from the assembly there and we met at one of the baptismal pools the Jews used in the city. I made a public confession of Jesus as Lord and was buried with Christ in baptism. I now too was a follower of the Way.