Acts 14:8

Acts 14:8. And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet. The incident here related was evidently no very unusual one in the life of these first great missionaries of the faith. But this Lystra miracle became famous in early Christian story, and was, no doubt, oftentimes related as the event which gave occasion to the first direct invitation from the founders of Christianity to the great heathen world, in the persons of the idolaters of Lystra in Lycaonia. The case of the baptism of Cornelius the Roman officer was the first advance out of the charmed circle of Judaism; but Cornelius, though a Gentile, was no idolater. He was possibly even a ‘proselyte of the gate,' and certainly was a worshipper of and a worker for the one true God. The scene of the healing, no uncommon one, reminds us ‘of the manner in which those who carry the message of salvation to the heathen in the present day collect around them groups of listeners in Burmah and Hindostan. It was on one of these occasions, as Paul was preaching in some thoroughfare of the city, that the lame man heard him: his friends had placed him there perhaps to solicit alms' (Hackett On the Acts).