At the end of January we remember the Conversion of St Paul, who, once fiercely anti-Christian, met God on the road to Damascus. We all know the story. Paul, or Saul as he was then known, was a member of the Jewish establishment, bent on persecuting this new Christian religion. And one day, on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, he was struck down by a bright light and a loud voice, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

And he makes the oddest of replies: he doesn't say ‘who's that’? or ‘what do you want?’ Instead he says: “Tell me who you are, Lord?” It’s a bit like when you half recognise someone. They are no stranger, but you are seeing them in a different way. Saul sees God in a new way, in a new light: but they are already acquainted.

But when he gets up, Saul is temporarily blinded because the change - the whole dynamic crushing and rebuilding of everything he had ever thought or known - is simply so dramatic. So his system goes into shutdown. He neither eats nor drinks, and it is not until 3 days later that he realises that it was Jesus who appeared to him on the road to Damascus, his eyes are opened and he is baptised and christened Paul.

So it wasn’t the conversion from one religion to another, like changing electric suppliers from one company to another. But rather the realisation that the God that he was now persecuting was the same God that he had always known, from his mother religion, Judaism, a God who was above and engaged in both religions….which meant that God was not small or confined or narrow or partisan, or locked up in one set of religious words. On the contrary, he was a God above, and much bigger than, all of it.

It was a dramatic moment that changed his life around in a radically new direction. Following his conversion, he became the leading proponent of the Chrisitan faith of his time, and went on to write at least 11 of the 27 books in the New Testament.

The image of St Paul above, dated c380 AD, was found under layers of white calcium deposits in the 4th century catacombs of St. Tecla in Rome.