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TITLE: It is Gone | Previous Challenge Entry
By Bridget Bewick
07/22/26
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Damascus is a city buzzing with trade. Here you can buy goods from all over the world. Here you can worship any of the gods. Here you can enjoy art and theatre and debate. In the middle of the city, running east to west, is a street called Straight, although that is not the name given to it by the Romans. At the eastern end of this street, you enter the city through a three arched gate, and along its length you can hide from the sun beneath colonnades of stone. In this street isa house belonging to a man named Judas. In the house of Judas, on the street called Straight, in the city of Damascus, a blind man is waiting.

This is the third day of waiting, the third day of no food or drink or light. This is the third day since the voice on the road changed his world for ever. He does not yet know what that change will be. On his way to this city, there had been a great flash of light that surrounded him and knocked him from his horse into the dust. And then the voice.

“Saul, Saul,” it had called him by name. “Saul, Saul. Why are you persecuting me?”

He had not understood, and asked. “Who are you Lord?”

“I am Jesus. I am the one you are persecuting.”

Faces rose up before his now unseeing eyes. Men, women, even children. Each one proclaiming this Jesus. Each one accused, condemned, punished at his word.

voice had told him that in the city he would be shown what to do. So now, on this third day of waiting, he sat in darkness. The faces, weeping, begging for mercy, always declaring the life of this Jesus, kept him company and he waited. He waited for the punishment his own heart told him was his. He waited to be told what to do. He waited for the end.

On the morning of the third day, this day, a vision had come to him, or perhaps a dream. In this new darkness, for before the flash and the voice, his eyes served him like those of other men. In this new darkness he could not rightly distinguish sleeping and waking. Waking or sleeping, his blind eyes had seen a man coming to him and restoring his sight. Perhaps he would tell him the punishment to which he was surely condemned.

The man is here now, knocking on the door. He is taken to the waiting Saul. Ananias, for that is his name, looks at Saul and hesitates, for he has heard of the men and women and even children, condemned by this man’s word. At last, Ananias reaches out his hand and touches Saul’s arm. Saul flinches, expecting blows. In the vision he will receive his sight, but in his heart he is expecting pain. He deserves pain.

“Brother Saul,” his voice is gentle and Saul hears the same voice he heard on the road and in his vision. “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me.” He paused and Saul felt the need to weep. “He has sent me so that you may see again, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

A pause. The only sound is a soft rattle as something like scales fall from Saul’s eyes. He watches them as they are caught up by a breath of air and taken to settle in a dark corner. He looks up at Ananias, hardly understanding that he can now see.

“It is gone,” he whispers, afraid to believe himself. “The condemnation is gone.”

“Brother Saul,” Ananias takes his hand and lifts him to his feet. “There IS no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.* Come now, and be baptised.”

*Romans 8 v 1

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