Public opinion can change very quickly: people who were once revered can soon become vilified and the opposite can also happen. It’s not often, however, that both processes can happen to the same person, yet this happened to Paul. On his missionary journey to Lystra, he was first worshipped as a god because he healed a man and yet within a short space of time was stoned after Jews from Iconium and Antioch stirred up the crowds against him (Acts 14:11-19), whereas in Malta, he was first called a murderer and then a god! (Acts 28:1-10)
Both these incidents remind us that opinions can change very quickly, often when swayed by other people or by circumstances. People rarely see the bigger picture and judgments are often made on people based on what we can see – which tends to give us at best a glimpse into a person. God reminds the prophet Samuel that he does not look at outward appearances but at the heart (1 Sam 16:7), and it’s important for us always to remember this. We often tend to think that we know what is going on in situations, but just as the islanders on Malta reached the wrong conclusion about Paul initially (assuming that if he survived a shipwreck simply to be bitten by a snake, he must have done something very wrong!) and were equally wrong to believe he was a god because he survived the snake bite, so we must be careful not to jump to conclusions and to be prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt!
