They glorified God

“When they heard this, they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, ‘God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.’” (ACTS 11: 18)

We should always be open; for surprising and exceeding our imagination is God’s merciful love. It is so easy for us to think in a condemning way: ‘You entered the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them,” but Our Lord works differently: “If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?” Confronted with God’s merciful love, we should, like the first community of Christians, “stop objecting and glorify God.” Only God knows everything about us; only He loves us unconditionally, and only He, The Good Shepherd, can “grant life-giving repentance to us.” We can’t.

“I am the good shepherd, says the Lord; I know my sheep, and mine know me.”