We prefer reasonable religion. Reasonable religion has taught us to pray and give alms. Miracles are possible, we formally acknowledge, but then again, we don’t like to be disappointed. So our prayers are not so much for divine and miraculous healing but for wisdom for doctors and nurses. Or we just raise money to build clinics.

The day started normally enough. Peter and John were walking to the temple to pray. This is apparently something they did every day, the type of thing religious people from time immemorial have done. Peter and John then stepped through the Beautiful Gate to enter the temple area and passed a few beggars, as they did every day. And most of these beggars, either by sign or word, pleaded for some money.

This is a reasonable thing for a beggar to do. And the reasonable expectation is that religious people will feel compassion and toss the beggar a few coins. This is something religious people have done from time immemorial.

We don’t know what Peter and John usually did in this situation. One might suppose, like us, they sometimes ignored the beggars, and sometimes gave up some spare change. But this time, Peter sensed a shift in the wind, the arrival of the Spirit, which signaled that some holy chaos was about to be unleashed.

He told the beggar he had no money, but he could give him this: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”

One can easily imagine a snicker coming from bystanders. Or maybe the lame man sarcastically thinking, Right. How about just a few coins, mister?

Peter acts as if what he said is perfectly sensible, and he grabs the man’s hand and pulls him up off the ground. The man’s feet and ankles “were made strong” in the very act of Peter pulling him up, so that the man, halfway up, now leaps up, and walks with Peter and John into the temple.

This becomes no ordinary prayer meeting: the man is alternately “walking and leaping and praising God” and clinging to Peter and John. Pandemonium broke out as people, who watched the man “walking and praising God,” now “were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened.” So “utterly astounded” were they, they also “ran together” with Peter, John, and the healed man to Solomon’s Portico.

It was another one of those moments when the Holy Spirit turned reasonable religion—with its mundane expectations for piety and morality—into something extraordinary.

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This article is an excerpt from Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Power of the Holy Spirit (Baker). Mark Galli is the senior managing editor of Christianity Today.