Acts chapter eight records the interesting account of Philip’s encounter with a man from Ethiopia. Luke emphasizes the fact that this encounter took place on a desert road, a place where one would hardly expect anything significant to happen. However, God works in mysterious ways, and the Lord often leads us to places we might not otherwise travel to encounter people we might not otherwise meet to share with them the good news that they might not otherwise hear.

When Philip got to the desert road he met an Ethiopian man who was an important official for the queen. He was returning home after having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship. The Spirit told Philip to approach the chariot in which the man was riding. When he obediently did so, he heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked the man if he understood what he was reading. The man humbly admitted that he needed an interpreter and invited Philip to ride with him and explain the Scripture to him.

God had obviously been preparing both of these men for this encounter, because the man could not have been reading a more appropriate passage of Scripture. He was reading about a lamb who was being led to be slaughtered. Philip began with that text and told him the good news about Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world through his sacrificial death on the cross.

Philip not only told the man about the gospel, but he must also have told him how one must respond to the gospel, because the man noticed some water along the way and asked why he couldn’t be baptized there and then. Philip perceived that the man had adequately understood the gospel message enough to be baptized into Christ, so they stopped the chariot. Both men went into the water, and the man had his sins washed away in Christian baptism. The Ethiopian man went on his way rejoicing, and Philip was whisked away to his next God-given assignment.

So, what do we need to learn from this story? First, understand that we all have been called to be witnesses for Jesus, and we should obediently follow God’s leading as he provides us with opportunities to do so. Secondly, we should know that some important conversations can occur in unlikely places, our own version of “the desert road”, so to speak. Finally, we need to realize that the joy we spread to others and the satisfaction we feel ourselves are the natural outcomes of obeying God’s command to share the gospel message.

If you feel like you are currently on some version of a desert road, don’t despair! Be confident that God has a plan and choose every day to be a willing participant in that plan, even if you don’t fully understand how it will all turn out. Trust that God will use you to bless others, and that you in turn will feel blessed to have been used by God in a very meaningful way.