Note: On Saturdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
It doesn’t seem quite right, does it? Yesterday, we celebrated the baby Jesus, come to redeem us all. Then today, wham! Today’s lectionary readings remind us that being a Christian isn’t all about the sweetness of a newborn. It’s also about remembering that following Jesus means laying down our lives, perhaps not as gruesome or as public as His crucifixion, but death all the same.
We may not be condemned to stoning as Stephen was, but we all 
know those moments when we’re the only ones who don’t think something cultural is clever or funny, when we face a situation where remaining quiet is the easiest thing to do—but far from the righteous thing to do.
In Acts, we see Stephen, the first martyr, speak truth. People don’t like it. He doesn’t care. He speaks the words that were given to him, indifferent to what the earthly cost might be. And so he dies. But those words of truth may have touched ever so slightly the hard heart of one of the witnesses that day. Maybe Saul’s conversion on that road to Damascus would have happened just as it did without Stephen’s words; maybe it wouldn’t have. But Stephen didn’t stop and ponder his remarks. He trusted. May we do the same, each and every day.
