Luke wrote the history of the early church but he wasn’t personally present at these events until chapter 16 (Ac 16:10). To gather all this information he had to interview eyewitnesses, ask them pointed questions to draw out their memories, and then carefully write down what they told him. Someone had to tell him about the martyrdom of Stephen; someone who was there and heard and saw what happened; someone who was at the debate and then later was present when the Sanhedrin gathered to try him; someone who saw the look on Stephen’s face and described it as “the face of an angel;” someone who listened to his defense and remembered it point by point; someone who saw, and maybe even felt, the anger that surged through the room when Stephen told them they had murdered the Messiah; someone who watched everyone cover their ears and rush forward dragging him out of the city to stone him; someone who stood close enough to hear him speak as he was dying; someone who heard him cry out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!”

I suspect I know who it was. Have you guessed? I think Luke didn’t have to travel far to get this information. That man was only a few feet away from him, in the next room, awaiting his own trial. And when he allowed himself to remember Stephen, the first thing he said, probably through his tears, was to call him a man “full of grace,” because that was Stephen’s gift to him.

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