These few verses have one common theme: traps. Whether they are traps set by you or for you, it is important to know what they look like so you can avoid falling into them.

Most of us have grown up being told to make our beds. It is a chore. But it begins the day with a small accomplishment, restoring order to the chaos of the bed on which we rested the night before.

Our God is a God of order and distinction, separating the day from the night, the land from the sea, male from female.

In Acts 1:8, Jesus had told the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and give them power to fulfill the great commission, beginning first in Jerusalem, then in all Judea and Samaria, and finally everywhere in the world.

Saul (Paul) has just been sent out informally to the Gentiles from Jerusalem.

As they humble themselves to pray, a keen awareness of God’s orchestration of events now dawns upon his people.

It is important to see what underlies their discernment. Both Cornelius and Peter were men who made it their regular habit to pray, and we have a written record of the Lord’s extraordinary answers to them.

The revelation is given to Peter in the context of his sleep (Acts 10:10). Deep sleep signifies a transformational moment in the workings of God towards mankind. We see it in deep-sleeping dreams to Adam (Genesis 2:21), Abraham (Genesis 15:4), and Daniel (Daniel 7:1).

Cornelius, the God fearing centurion, is a man who has made it his habit to be in the presence of God through prayer.

The Lord draws the whole episode to a conclusion. Two strangers, the one a Jewish apostle the other a Gentile captain, find that they have been united in the presence of God. They stand together as a sign of a deeper spiritual unity in Christ.

It took time, but their faithful obedience has finally clarified things.

All gravestones have two things in common: names and dates. There’s something else they have in common, something most people overlook – the dash between the dates. Names and dates are important, but without the dash they’re meaningless. That’s because the dash is more than a simple horizontal line, more than punctuation.