The content of Luke’s second volume of work — The Acts of the Apostles — is summed up in Acts 1:8: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Embracing and embodying that directive is the continuous theme of Acts. Today’s text is the first of three startling conversion stories that demonstrate just how all encompassing is this directive. The conversions of the Ethiopian eunuch (8:26‑40), Saul of Tarsus (9:1‑19), and Cornelius and his family (10:30‑48), dramatically demonstrate how “the ends of the earth” include the unacceptable, the enemy, the Gentile, the “other.”

Although entitled “The Acts of the Apostles” throughout, Luke repeatedly makes it clear that these “acts” are “acts” of God, worked out through the witness of those who conf…