Topic: Soul Care Basics — Key Scripture: Acts 9:3-4, 8-9
“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ …Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.” — Acts 9:3-4, 8-9
Saul was on his way somewhere specific.
He had a destination, a purpose, a clear sense of what he was doing and why it mattered. He was a man of conviction, of training, of religious authority — moving through the world with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where he stood and what God required of him. He was not wandering. He was not lost. He was on a mission.
And then the light hit him, and everything went dark.
This is one of the most disorienting moments in Scripture. The man who would become Paul — who would write more of the New Testament than anyone else, who would carry the Gospel across the known world, who would become one of the most significant figures in the history of Christianity — begins his transformation blind, on the ground, being led by the hand into a city he had planned to enter as a conqueror.
The encounter with God did not immediately clarify things for Saul. It first took away his ability to see.
Three days of blindness. Three days of not eating, not drinking, sitting in the darkness of what has just happened, waiting for something he does not yet understand. The old life is gone — the old certainty, the old direction, the old sense of who he was and what he was for. The new life has not yet arrived. He is in the in-between.
There is a name for this in spiritual formation literature. The dark night. The liminal space. The threshold experience where the person you were is no longer available to you and the person you are becoming has not yet taken shape. It is not a comfortable place. It is not a place that is easy to trust. And it is not a place that Western Christianity, with its emphasis on clarity and productivity and forward movement, tends to honor very well.
But it is a biblical place. It appears everywhere, once you start looking. The wilderness before the promised land. The belly of the fish. The garden of Gethsemane. The tomb before the resurrection. Three days of blindness in a room in Damascus.
God does some of His most important work in the dark. The blindness was not an obstacle to the transformation. It was part of it.
What Saul needed in those three days was not more information. He had heard the voice. He knew something had happened. What he needed was time — time to be still, to be unable to move on his own power, to wait for what came next. And what came next was not a platform or a calling or a clear five-year plan.
It was Ananias. A man who had every reason to be afraid of Saul, who arrived because God sent him, and who placed his hands on the blinded man and said: Brother Saul. Brother. Before the restoration of sight. Before the filling of the Holy Spirit. Before the baptism. The first thing Saul received in his blindness was someone who came to him and called him brother.
This is, again, the ministry of presence. Before the clarity, before the commission, before the sight returns — someone shows up and calls you brother. Someone sits with you in the dark.
There are seasons in a person’s life that feel like the road to Damascus. Not the dramatic encounter — though sometimes those happen too — but the aftermath. The three days of not being able to see. The disorientation of having the old certainty stripped away without the new thing yet in view. The grief of a version of yourself that is gone, the confusion of not knowing who you are becoming, the frightening vulnerability of being led by the hand because your own sight is not available to you.
These seasons are not failures. They are not evidence of weak faith or spiritual stagnation. They are, in the biblical pattern, often the very threshold of transformation.
At BRKN Soul Care, we hold space for the three days. For the in-between. For the person who cannot yet see clearly and is not sure what is coming and needs someone to sit with them in the dark until the sight begins to return.
You do not have to have it figured out to come. You do not have to be able to see the destination. You simply have to be willing to be led by the hand for a while, in the company of someone who will not leave you in the dark alone.
The light that blinded Saul was not his enemy. It was the beginning of the most important work of his life. And the three days of blindness were not wasted — they were the space in which everything that followed became possible.
Trust the time spent in the dark. And let someone sit with you in it.
If this resonates with where you are today, BRKN Soul Care is here. Book a free Introductory Conversation at brknsoulcare.org and take the first step. You don’t have to carry this alone.