Acts 9:1-5: in context

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples, is on the road to Damascus with letters authorizing him to arrest believers, when a light from heaven flashes around him. He falls to the ground and hears a voice: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? He asks, who are you, Lord? And the answer comes: I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. The one Saul thought he was hunting down through his scattered followers is the risen Christ himself, who counts the persecution of his people as persecution of himself.

The words that stopped Saul on the road hold a truth of immense comfort and weight: why do you persecute me? Saul had been hunting Christians, dragging men and women to prison; he thought his war was against a scattered sect. And Jesus says, you are persecuting me. What was done to his people, Jesus counted as done to himself; he so identifies with his own that their suffering is his suffering, their persecution his persecution. He is not a distant Lord, removed from what his people endure; he is united to them so closely that to touch them is to touch him. There is deep comfort in this for those who suffer for their faith, or who suffer at all as God's people. Whatever we endure, Christ is not watching from a distance; he counts it as his own, feels it as done to himself, is united to us in it. He who touches you touches the apple of his eye, God says; and Jesus tells Saul that to persecute the least of his followers is to persecute the Lord himself. We are never alone in our suffering; Christ shares it, counts it his own. And there is a solemn warning here too, for those who would harm God's people: what is done to them is done to Christ, and he takes it personally. But the note that dominates the scene is grace: the risen Christ, identifying with his persecuted people, does not destroy their persecutor but arrests him with a question and turns him into an apostle. The one who was wounding Christ by wounding his people is met, not with vengeance, but with a summons to grace. Why do you persecute me? is at once the cry of a Lord united to his suffering people and the opening of mercy to the very one who was causing the suffering.

When I suffer, as one of God's people, do I imagine Christ watching from a distance, or can I take hold of what he told Saul, that he so identifies with his own that their suffering is his, so that I am never alone in what I endure, for the Lord counts it as done to himself?