It is Never too Late to Change
First Day from Paul the Apostle (Twelve Days of Christmas Gift Series)
Before he became a saint, Paul was the kind of man most of us would avoid. He wasn’t a preacher, or a leader, or even a believer. He was a hunter. His mission was to track down the earliest Christians and shut their movement down. And then, on a dusty road outside Damascus, everything he thought he understood about God and himself flipped in a single, blinding moment.
Paul is important because he shaped almost everything Christians believe today. He wrote letters that became a large part of the New Testament. He carried the message of Jesus across the Roman world. But none of that explains why he changed so many lives. What made Paul powerful wasn’t his education or background. It was the simple truth he discovered the day his old life collapsed: a person can start over.
That is Paul’s gift. He shows that transformation isn’t a slow polishing of your flaws. It’s a new beginning. He didn’t soften his past or try to hide it. He admitted he persecuted the church, then lived as if grace could rewrite even a life like his. When he spoke of being a “new creation,” he was telling his story. If God could take him — angry, rigid, certain — and turn him into a builder of communities, then anyone could be remade.
This matters today because so many people feel stuck. Some feel trapped in old habits. Others feel crushed by expectations. Many assume that whatever has shaped them so far will always define them. Paul cuts through all that noise. He is proof that your past cannot lock you into one version of yourself. You don’t need to perform your way into a better life. You can receive one and grow into it. In a world filled with pressure, comparison, and exhaustion, that kind of hope hits differently.
“Put off your old self… and put on the new self, created to be like God.”
Ephesians 4:22–24, Paul the ApostleStudying Paul surprised me in ways I didn’t expect. I always pictured him as sharp and intense, but the man who emerges from his letters is painfully honest. He talks about weakness. He admits his struggles. He speaks as someone who knows what it means to fail and start again. That honesty made me ask myself a harder question: do I believe change is possible, or do I only say it? Paul forced me to consider where I still cling to old identities instead of letting grace do its work.
The simple takeaway: you are not finished. A new life is always on the table, no matter how long you’ve lived the old one. This is Gift One. It is free for all subscribers.
This first gift, a lesson from Paul, one of the great Apostles and saints in Christianity, is only the beginning.
Over the next eleven days, I’ll be moving forward through two thousand years of Christian thought, studying how different minds wrestled with the same human questions we still face today. Each day will focus on one theologian and one gift — courage, growth, clarity, wonder, integrity, or longing — not as abstract ideas, but as lessons that can shape how we live now.
My aim isn’t to teach theology for its own sake, but to walk through it slowly and honestly, sharing what I’m learning along the way. Tomorrow, we open Gift Two and move to the next thinker who shaped Christian imagination — Origen of Alexandria, a thinker who believed reality itself has layers, and that learning how to read them changes how we see the world. If you’re walking this journey with me, stay close for the next reflection.
Well written!
👏 yet another well-written and engrossing piece! Thank you for sharing your research and writings.