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Acts 8:26-40 NRSV

“Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: 

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, 

and like a lamb silent before its shearer, 

so he does not open his mouth. 

In his humiliation justice was denied him. 

Who can describe his generation? 

For his life is taken away from the earth.” 

The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

You know this story. But keep in mind that it would not have been possible had Philip not responded to God. He had preached to crowds in Jerusalem and now he is sent to one person. One person who because he was a eunuch (deformity) and black could not be accepted into Judaism. But that is who God sent Philip to on that road. 

The Eunuch was from a culture with different beliefs, but he worshiped God. This Ethiopia is not what we know now as Abyssinia, which is in the hill country to the east of upper Nile. But most probably the ancient kingdom of Meroe, which was south of Aswan between the first and sixth cataracts of the Nile.  The cataracts are places of shallow water or  whitewater rapids where the surface of the rocks ad stones stick out of the water. 

Meroe was a flourishing kingdom from the eighth century BCE to the fourth century CE. Their kings were  viewed as incarnations of the sun god and was a ceremonial role. The real administration was in the hands of the powerful queen mothers called “the Candace.” The eunuch was held in high position as what we would call “the Minister of Finance.” 

So God sent Philip who was already in Jerusalem to someone leaving Jerusalem and getting near the last watering place before the desert to help him understand what he was reading, and he was baptized. God uses who he uses, accepts who he accepts. Our position is to listen, and obey. Don’t you love it? There is no big opportunity or small opportunity as the big come out of the greatness of the small. Don’t miss what God is doing in your life. enough for now.