Here’s one of my favorite Scriptures in the entire Bible.  However, I say that lots and lots, so don’t tell me I said that before when next week I come up with another of my all-time Bible favorites and then another one the next day! Anyway,  in Acts 4 Peter and John, two of the main apostles, are in big trouble.  The religious leaders thought they had done away with this Jesus, and wanted  no more talk of His resurrection from the dead or of Him or of anything about Him.  Dead and buried, over and out. Just forget it.  Shut your mouth, apostles.  Or else–  what happened to your leader, well, guess what?  You’re next, unless you just keep quiet.  Enough, already, of this Jesus.   Well, that would make me take stock for sure.  I could be next on the cross.  And so could you.  What should we do?  Acts 4:12 says it all—if there’s only one way out and someone doesn’t want others to know about it for some selfish or perverse reason, and a fire breaks out, you just shout out where the exit is.  Who cares what someone else thinks.  Or your grandchild runs out into the street at a hospital ‘quiet zone’ and a truck is coming toward him, you do what comes natural—you cry out, run out, do anything to save that precious child and the ‘quiet zone’ will just have to deal with it.  And that’s what the apostles did–they spoke out and up and could do nothing less.  Jesus is the only way of salvation, every other path leads to nowhere and  no good.  ‘No one else…no other name given…’  How did they know this?  No seminary grad’s among them.  None of them had their Master of Divinity from Princeton, none graduated from a famous Bible school.  Verse 13 says that the religious leaders could see the apostles’ boldness but that they were ‘unschooled, ordinary men’.  Just common, run-of-the-mill people.  No silver spoon in their mouths, no special perks of birth among any of them.  Really, somewhat a motley crew–a tax-collector (loved then as much as now!), a terrorist (Zealot), fishermen, and a bunch of unknowns.  Just your ordinary Joe.  Like the guy next door.  But that’s when the ordinary becomes extraordinary.  When the precious arises above the common.  For as the religious leaders also ‘ took note that these men had been with Jesus’.  Sure, they were just people like you and me.  But what set them apart was that they had been with Jesus, had known the Risen Lord, had accepted Him into their lives so that the ordinary now was extraordinary.  I think without Jesus my life would be bleak at best.  The abandonment of polio at age 2 would have been so traumatic that I would be an emotional cripple, and professionally money would have been the sole game.  What a waste!  How much more God had in store for me.  And for you.  He has a plan for our lives.  Sometimes it’s hard to see.  But that’s faith, folks.  Time to step up and believe Him.  He’ll take that ordinary and reshape it into something extraordinary…for Him, for others.  That’s a life worth living!  Agree?