Acts 6:9-15 describes the first travels of the missionary team of Paul from Asia into Europe.
Acts 16:6-10 is part of the ninth segment, Acts 15:36 to 18:17, in which Luke reports the second missionary journey of Paul. In 15:36-41, Paul and Barnabas part company. In 16:1-5, Paul goes to Lycaonia. Timothy converts and receives circumcision. Given the battles Paul fought over circumcision, what do you think of this incident? In 16:6-10, Paul has a vision of a Macedonian man. In 16:11-40, they are in Philippi, witness and heal as the authorities arrest them. In 17:1-9, they go on to Thessalonica. In 17:10-15, they go on to Beroera. In 17:16-34, they go to Athens and Paul delivers a speech to the Gentiles there. How does this sermon differ from what we have read so far? In 18:1-17, they arrive in Corinth and Paul the authorities arrest Paul.
We find in 16:6-10 that Paul, Silas, and Timothy traveled through Phrygia and the Galatian country. We learn from Galatians that Paul became extremely ill at this point. The author of the 'we' passages, which tradition says is Luke the physician, joins the team. They went on through Mysia and down to Troas. It was there they made a new beginning in their mission by deciding to go into Macedonia (Europe). This portion of the passage appears like the fragment of an itinerary.[1]
These verses seem designed to show how "the Apostles, guided in surprising ways by signs from above and contrary to their own plans, conducted no mission at that time in Asia Minor, but were driven on to Troas and beyond into Europe itself."[2] The Holy Spirit forbids them to speak the word in Asia and the Spirit of Jesus does not allow them to go to Bithynia. Luke's language is obscure and the route which he indicates somewhat uncertain, but his intention clearly is to explain why it was that the missionaries instead of taking, as might have been expected, the great road through the Lycus and Meander valley past Colossae and Laodicea to Ephesus, by-passed these centers and embarked upon a mission to Europe. The sequence of events seems to have been this: (a) Paul had planned to speak the word in Asia, but the Holy Spirit forbade him to do so. (b) He therefore went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia until he came opposite Mysia. (c) His revised plan had then been to go into Bithynia, but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (d) Accordingly, once more changing their plans, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. The more familiar Troy was ten miles to the north.
9 During the night, Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. Paul's circuitous search for the future direction of his mission comes to a halt when he receives a decisive message. Although some have tried to find a specific identity for this "man of Macedonia," it is far more likely that Paul perceived he was a Macedonian due to his dress and accent. After receiving two "no" messages from extraordinary sources, Paul now receives an imploring "yes" message: "Come over to Macedonia and help us." Of course, the people of Macedonia did not call for help from Paul. They were not searching for him, or for Christ. Instead, what Paul sees in this dream is their need of the good news, whether they know it or not. The same is true for the world. This passage reminds us that those of us who seek to follow Jesus are under obligation to the world and therefore jointly responsible for what becomes of the world. The world does not know of its need for a community that follows Jesus or of its need for Jesus. Thus, the people of the world need, lack, seek, and expect to find the one thing that that God has called the Christian community to do. We need to be honest at this point. Our experience tells us that most people do not give obvious evidence of this need in their lives. Yet, the community that follows Jesus Christ has what they need.[3] It is fitting that this final plea comes to Paul in a dream. In Hellenistic literature, some of the most life-altering insights of the "great" came to them while in a dreaming state. For Paul and the future Gentile mission of the church, the call toward Macedonia is momentous. Paul's turn toward the West into Macedonia marks the first step in the church's missionary movement into Europe itself, setting up the first signs of the dichotomy between the Christian West and the unmissionized East that would remain until this century.
Come over to Macedonia? To a Roman colony run by a bunch of Gentiles who have little respect for the laws and traditions of Israel? In Macedonia, you have unscrupulous businesspersons and slaves, along with Roman magistrates who can easily arrest the followers of Jesus, flog them, and throw them in prison. To which, Paul said, “Let’s go.”
When it comes to preaching good news, there are no groups to which Paul could not go. Paul crossed the limits created by human beings, so that Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, they needed the good news. He set the pattern for the church through the centuries. I might more carefully say that the approach of Paul ought to have set the pattern for the church. The American church has fallen short.
In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated. The monument was first proposed in 1867 but construction did not begin until 1914; the cornerstone was set in 1915. Architect Henry Bacon designed it to resemble the Parthenon, believing that a defender of democracy should be memorialized in a building that pays homage to the birthplace of democracy. Sculptor Daniel Chester French studied photographs of Lincoln for years; his Lincoln appears somber, even care-worn, one hand closed in a fist and the other in a more relaxed position. The monument was dedicated in front of an audience of more than 50,000 people. Even though Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, the audience was segregated; keynote speaker Robert Moton, president of the Tuskegee Institute and an African-American, was not permitted to sit on the speakers’ platform. Just over 40 years later, on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King Jr. would give his “I have a dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of an audience of 200,000.[4]
Norman Rockwell is best remembered for his iconic 1943 painting “Freedom From Want,” depicting a smiling White family gathered around a Thanksgiving turkey. But it is less well known that he decisively turned a corner just a few decades later, choosing to reject the airbrushed image of a nation implicitly populated with only happy, White, middle-class families. Rockwell did this by abandoning his employer of nearly 50 years, The Saturday Evening Post, in large part because the magazine would let him portray Blacks only in subservient positions. After including two Black children in his 1961 illustration “Golden Rule,” Rockwell began receiving hate mail from segregationists, and the Post told him he should paint portraits only of statesmen or celebrities. Those instructions clashed with his conscience. He joined Look magazine, and it was there that he painted some of the hardest-hitting, most widely seen visual attacks on racism in the nation’s history. Rockwell’s first illustration for Look, published in 1964, was titled “The Problem We All Live With.” It showed the torsos of four besuited U.S. marshals escorting a 6-year-old Black girl in a white dress, Ruby Bridges, to integrate an all-White school in New Orleans, with [a racial slur] scrawled above her. Although Rockwell and Look received a torrent of angry letters, the magazine stood by him. When one approving reader wrote, “You have just said in one painting what people cannot say in a lifetime,” Rockwell wrote back: “I just had my 70th birthday and I am trying to be a bit more adult in my work.”[5]
In Acts 16:11-15, the missionary team arrives at Philippi. Philippians 4:15 refers to the significance of the help the Philippians offered in the early days of the ministry of Paul in Europe. 11 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. Once they make the destination decision, these travelers make suitable time. By taking a sea route as opposed to making an overland journey, they travel up to a hundred miles a day. The scant two days this sailing takes (vv.11-12) reveals their unusually favorable winds. Their destination of Philippi was the largest city in its district of Macedonia. It enjoyed the status of being a Roman colony, allowing its citizens to seek Roman citizenship as well. A large number of retired Roman military men populated Philippi, however, a fact that tended to keep native Macedonian inhabitants second-class citizens of the Empire. 13 On the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer (προσευχὴν, literally “a prayer” but by metonymy a reference to where people pray). Luke refers to a synagogue, although the fact that there is no established synagogue suggests there may not have been the requisite number of Jewish men (10) available to establish a minyan for a permanent place of prayer. The riverside seems to have been a customary place for a Jewish place of prayer: Philo and Josephus commonly use the word and we find it in inscriptions as a synonym for "synagogue." Paul and his companions had encountered Lydia and the other women “outside the gate by the river” while seeking “a place of prayer.” The text does not make it entirely clear why Paul's group encounters this group of women gathered by the river. Some scholars suggest the location “by the river” was to facilitate Jewish cleansing rituals. Yet, it would in fact be quite unusual for a synagogue (and notably, that is not the word used here although it is found 38 times elsewhere in Luke-Acts) to be located outside the city walls. Interestingly, while the metonymic use of “prayer” to refer to a synagogue was common among Jews, we find that use of “prayer” only in relation to the ministry at Philippi in Luke-Acts (see also v. 16). Nevertheless, under this Jewish influence, this metonymy also extended to places where other gods were recipients of prayer. Further, we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. Paul is showing some flexibility here. He saw a man from Macedonia, but those whom he first meets are women. Paul adopted his usual approach by way of the synagogue, accordingly, sat down— the usual posture of the teacher— and spoke to the women who had come together. The last words give an accurate touch of local color, for social convention seems to have allowed women singular freedom in Macedonia. Luke has identified several critical moments through preaching. Peter preaches immediately after the Holy Spirit came upon the gathering in the upper room in Acts 2. Philip shares with the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8, an event that was significant for the Hellenistic community within the church in terms of its mission. Peter shares with Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11, a significant moment in the Jewish part of the church, as they begin to see the need to reach out to Gentiles. Now, Paul shares with these women as he begins his European mission.
We know why Paul and his team went to the river outside the gate. We are not sure why the women are there. The reason the terminology of Luke is important is that if we think of this place as a synagogue, then we can assume they are Jewish. However, what would happen if the women were present for another reason? As non-Jews, unrestricted by Sabbath ordinances, they may simply have been at the river doing their laundry. They may have been involved in Bacchic rites in worship of the Dionysiac cult. Indeed, scholars have noted numerous parallels between not only Paul’s encounter with Lydia but also even his later imprisonment and deliverance through an earthquake with a scene from Euripides’ Bacchae about Dionysius who sails to Europe to spread his religious practices from its centers in Asia Minor. It is possible, then, that Luke has shaped the way in which he recounts Paul’s Philippian ministry by that well-known play. What might Luke have gained by structuring Paul’s ministry in Philippi along lines drawn from Euripides’ Bacchae? The answer to that may lie as much in the contrasts as in the parallels. Whereas many in Greco-Roman society had a negative view of the Bacchanalia generally and the mantic participation of women in it particularly, Luke is able to show women both delivered from such ecstatic control (more explicitly in the following account of the divining slave-girl, vv. 16-18) and assuming important leadership roles as heads of house churches. Dionysius may have brought a religion of excess to Europe, but because of Lydia, Paul is able to counter such Bacchanaliac excess with the message of the gospel.
14 A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God (σεβομένη τὸν Θεόν), was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. First, in one regard those details are perfectly consistent; Thyatira was, in fact, a noted center for the manufacture of purple-dyed products. Nevertheless, in another regard they raise questions since the city of Thyatira was in a region known as Lydia. While it is certainly possible a woman from there might have the name of the region as either a nickname or even a given name (there is scriptural evidence of “Lydia” as a personal name), it is also possible that the name “Lydia” is a literary device for a woman whose name was otherwise unknown. Indeed, apart from the presence of the word “named”, the Greek text would naturally read “a certain Lydian woman”. Moreover, even though Paul himself mentions other women by name who were prominent members of the Christian community in Philippi (Euodia and Syntyche; Philippians 4:2), Lydia is mentioned nowhere else in the NT outside Acts 16. Second, scholars divide on the question of whether Luke uses this expression in the technical sense of a Gentile who worships the God of the Jews but has not formally converted to Judaism. Luke uses the precise term “God-fearer” (φοβούμενος τὸν) of Cornelius in Acts 10:2, which he does not use here. Nevertheless, the literary links with Cornelius are clear. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15 When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us. God having “opened her heart” to accept Paul’s message, both “she and her household were baptized” and extended hospitality to him (v. 15) just as previously was the case with Cornelius and his household in response to Peter’s preaching (10:48). These parallels with Cornelius as the first Gentile convert in Acts reinforce the popular characterization of Lydia as the first European convert to Christianity. We see here the conversion of a woman, Lydia, as the first fruit of this new missionary journey. Her relationship with Paul serves to frame Acts’ full account of his ministry in Philippi, which both begins and ends with her home as its base of operation (see vv. 15 and 40). Lydia's conversion experience sets a classic example for future converts. Even though she is a "worshiper of God," and even though she is a well-established "dealer in purple cloth" (a luxurious, upper-class commodity), Lydia herself is active only as a listener. It is the Lord who "opened her heart." This change of heart is what enables Lydia to receive Paul's words "eagerly" and seek baptism. Letting another work through her and determine her actions is not a characteristic path for Lydia. For after her baptism, she becomes an active, determining participant in this missionary moment. Lydia is already a recognized Christian through her baptism. When Paul baptized her, her household, consisting of family and slaves alike, would compulsorily follow her into the new faith. This sense of family solidarity, admirable in many ways, must have led to some quite superficial "conversions." Lydia was a well-to-do woman. They could not turn down her offer. Although the text does not specify Lydia's marital status, it is likely that she was a widow who now ran her own household. Thus, she determines that "her household" will join her in embracing this newfound faith. Likewise, this successful merchant knows how to take charge and get what she wants. Although in his travels Paul usually refuses local hospitality, preferring to pay his own way, he is unable to refuse Lydia's cannily worded invitation: "If you have judged me to be faithful ... come and stay at my home." The first-person narrator explains Lydia's persistent persuasiveness by declaring "... she prevailed upon us."
We learn that Paul travelled by sea. He was on a ship with sails that could catch the wind. This historical fact is a metaphor for his life at this time. Paul seems unsure of the direction his mission is to take. He needs to catch the Spirit (wind) in order to have some direction in his life. This moment was critical for the witness of the church in these early years of its life.
James Mill (1773-1836), a stern and well-known Scottish thinker, observed his son's early brilliance and determined that the boy should be educated exhaustively in literature and the arts, science, history, and philosophy. [Remember, they did not have television and video games.] He read ancient works in their original Greek and Latin. I did not mention religion because James thought its music, ritual, liturgy, and devotional life a waste of time. His son, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) flourished in his academic studies in his teen years. He thought he had a goal to reform the world. He wrote his Autobiography toward the end of his life. In Chapter 5, he says that when he was around 20 years old, he experienced a malady of the mind and melancholy sweeping over him. I could not resist sharing this description of his life.
But the time came when I awakened from this (his contentment with his life thus far) as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826. I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin." In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.
He was right. Methodism, along with most religion, will say that finite things in which we hope will not bring satisfaction. He goes on to say that he hoped “the cloud would pass away” on its own. This experience went on for months. He seemed unable to shake the feeling even for a moment. The cloud became thicker and thicker. Here is how he put it.
I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else.
He recognized that he stood at the commencement of the voyage of his life. He knew his father equipped him well, to the point where he could see the beauty of the ship and the strong rudder. Yet, where was the sail? He no longer had a sense of the goal or purpose of his “ship of life.” The ship of his life looked good, but to what end and for what purpose? He did not know. He then makes a literary reference to a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Work Without Hope, February 21, 1825).
Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in my thoughts, not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a later period of the same mental malady [Here is the whole poem, of which Mill quoted only the last two lines]:
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.
Coleridge was quite right, of course, that nothing would put the soul to sleep quicker than a life without hope.
John Stuart Mill needed a sail for the ship of his life. However, would that make life easy? In 1980, Christopher Cross sang a song with the title “Sailing.” The song makes sailing have a dream-like quality. It makes sailing sound easy.
Well it's not far down to paradise, at least it is not for me
If the wind is right you can sail away and find tranquility
Oh the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see, believe me
It's not far to never, never land, reason to pretend
And if the wind is right you can find the joy of innocence again
Oh the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see, believe me
Sailing, takes me away
To where I've always heard it
Just a dream and the wind to carry me
Soon I will be free
True, a good sailor can make sailing seem effortless. In one of my churches, however, a physician loved to sail. It was a passion. He went to the ocean for his vacation and threw himself and his family into sailing. They loved sailing. The pictures of him in the sailboat made it clear that he was in his element. At the same time, the family talked of how much work it was. Sailing in a way that properly catches the wind is not an easy job. Properly done, though, the ship seems to move magically across the water, propelled by an invisible and unquenchable power.
If the wind stops blowing, sailors call it “becalmed.” When you make suitable time sailing, you enjoy “Godspeed.”’
It seemed like the philosopher John Stuart Mill wanted a “Godspeed” life for which all his education had not given him. He needed something else in his life.
One of the elements of this passage that attracts me is the sensitivity Paul has to allow the Spirit to direct his life. He is not asking God to bless what he has already done. He wants to be where God wants him to be. Reading his second missionary journey in full, you would know that receiving such direction is not easy. He was not sure where the Spirit would lead. In fact, he seems uncharacteristically unsure of himself. Two things I notice here.
First, we need to get up and do something. To hear the voice of God as clearly and as fully as Paul heard it, we must be heading in some direction so that God can correct our movements. God will not give us more light than we need for each step. We need to knock on the door. The answer may be no or yes, but we need to approach the door and knock. It would make sense that if we are standing still, we need no light. We need to get up and start doing what we think is God's will now and trust that God will tell us what to do while we are on the way. God never gives us more directions and more information than we need, and until we have started moving in one direction, there is no need for God to correct us and tell us to change direction.
The chair of the board of IBM said that the best way to mess up a problem is to do nothing. At least, get up and do something. Turn the wheel and see which way it goes. Then you can make more decisions and fix it. If you do nothing, nothing will get better. God is waiting for us to head out for Bithynia so that God can call us to Macedonia. God has a place in the witness of the church for each of us. Some know that place clearly and early. For others, it may take some time and testing. If you act with good faith, God will show you. I wonder how many of us have the life today that is precisely what we planned years ago. We started out in one direction, and discovered that we needed to go another direction. [I think I just described Paul in our passage.] As for me, I started out with a declared major in history, but God moved me toward ministry. I started seeking ministry in the Wesleyan Church, and then felt led to the United Methodist Church.
Flexibility is important as we mature in life. We need to bend, to be generous with others, and to be generous with ourselves. We can become so convinced of the direction God wants us to go. Yet, we receive signs that God does not want us to go that way. We become stubborn and rigid in what we perceive to be the will of God. What God wants is for us to open our minds and hearts to new possibilities. We can so easily put the will of God into a safe and manageable box. Our willingness to become flexible often makes us open to the new directions God wants us to go. We can become content with the comfort of what we know, when God wants us to see new doors to open. We need to listen with discerning minds and hearts. The risks of remaining as we are may be more than we can bear. The peace of launching into new areas of life and ministry may be what we need to experience the best life that God intends for us. Then, with more effectiveness, we can help others embrace Christ. Yes, there are people whose minds and hearts are open. We simply need to be faithful in our witness in word and deed.
There is a story about the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who was an agnostic. He died in 1895, but some time before that, he attended a party at a country house where guests stayed over the weekend. On Sunday, most guests prepared to go to church, but Huxley declined. Instead, he approached a fellow guest known to be a committed Christian, and he said, “Suppose you do not go to church today. Suppose you stay at home and tell me what your Christian faith means to you and why you are a Christian.” The man, knowing Huxley was a great thinker, replied, “But you could demolish my arguments in an instant. I am not clever enough to argue with you.” Huxley replied, “I don’t want to argue with you; I just want you to tell me what Christ means to you.” Therefore, the man stayed home from church and spoke with Huxley about his faith. When they finished, Huxley said, “I would give my right hand if only I could believe that.”
However, that was back in the 19th century, and we are more concerned with how something like that might play out in the 21st century. Our colleagues in the workplace or our friends in the neighborhood, or at the fitness center or golf club may have a sense that our faith is important to us and that we go to church regularly. Most of our conversations with these acquaintances deal with routine, everyday things. Nevertheless, as we develop relationships with others, sometimes something more serious comes up. Are we willing to hear and respond to their Macedonian call?
Second, we need to expect God to do something. Here is the other side of the story. Many churches and individuals have given up expecting God to do anything, while they expect to do everything. Someone has observed that many churches today are operating in such a way that, if the Holy Spirit suddenly departed from their program, nobody would notice that anything had happened. These disciples expected God to do something. They preached the Word and then they expected God to act. They could not tell what God would do. God is always unpredictable. God has several ways to gain access to a city, break open a community, and begin to spread the gospel and to plant a church. However, right here you find one of the ways the Lord frequently uses: God has prepared men and women, people whose hearts are ready to respond to the gospel.
I would like to lift Lydia as an example for all of us to follow. Lydia is a successful woman of business. She is a financially secure resident of the city of Philippi. She owns a business and a home. She is a “dealer in purple cloth” (16:14), having come from the well-known textile city of Thyatira. Purple clothing is the mark of wealth and royalty in the Roman world. To be dressed in purple is to boast of influence and power. Financially, Lydia has an investment in the way things are. She has a lot to lose. While Paul saw a Macedonian man, Paul meets a Macedonian woman, whose heart God had already prepared. She has good reason to show restraint. Paul and Silas have presented to her a new teaching about Jesus. She could have distrusted it. Distrust of strangers would be good reason to wait before deciding. If she were afraid, she could cling to her possessions tightly. Yet, she does not take any of these fear-based actions. Instead, she responds with faith, generosity, and hospitality. Here is the point about Lydia. We will not find such people in our lives if we are unwilling to keep moving, open to the leadership of the Spirit. The Lord opened her heart to receive the message eagerly. Lydia asks for baptism for herself and her household, and then insists, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home” (v. 15). Lydia prevails upon Paul and Silas, and they follow her home. In time, Lydia’s house becomes a center of Christian worship and outreach in Philippi, and Paul develops a close and loving bond with the church members there.
Anxiety or fearfulness is a natural way to respond to many circumstances in life. Anxiety can come in many shapes. We may have anxiety over losing good health, an approaching catastrophe, fear of failure, and so on. Life can be a nightmare. Each of us can wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that we are broke, forgotten and destitute. Each of us can have our own frightening vision of something wiping us out financially, robbed of stability and security, and condemned to a life on the streets. The antidote, however, is not a tighter grip on our possessions or our lifestyle regardless of how it is presently constituted. It is not a better vault for our secret stash of money that we need. The antidote is not a fear-driven attitude that causes us to hold back, play it safe, distrust strangers, and thereby close ourselves off to the surprising, good news that God is putting before us. Such responses are understandable, but they will not help us escape a life dominated by fear and anxiety. My first suggestion is that we need to choose faith over fear. Think of how often the Bible tells us this. We must be so prone to fear. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) I want to suggest that the way to find real peace and security is to practice faith, generosity, and hospitality.
Later, when he writes his letter to the Philippians, Paul expresses his gratitude in the following way.
“You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone” (Philippians 4:15).
They were the generous ones. They were the hospitable ones. They were the faithful ones. It all started with Lydia. Part of the point is that we will not find such persons unless we keep moving, under the guidance of the Spirit.
Some Christians travel light, some travel heavy; some take off frequently, others stick close to home. Whatever kind of soul traveler you are, never undertake any journey in life without prayer. It is prayer that enables God to be present with us, to direct our path, to help us navigate the rough roads, and rest easy on the smooth ways. To take off on any path without first listening for God's directions is to travel into dangerous territory indeed.
As we have learned, as effortless as sailing looks, it is not easy. The openness of Paul to the Spirit directing his life in prayer, and even in sleep, is not easy. Are you willing to change course, even re-chart the direction of your life, if the Spirit suddenly blows you in a new, unexpected direction?
[1] Ludemann
[2] (Weiss, History of Primitive Christianity, I, 279-80)
[3] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [72.2] 777-8.
[4] —Garrison Keillor, “The Writer’s Almanac” for May 30, 2021.
https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-may-30-2021/.
Retrieved December 2, 2021.
[5] —Andrew L. Yarrow, “Why Norman Rockwell left Thanksgiving Americana behind,” The Washington Post, November 24, 2021.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/24/why-norman-rockwell-left-thanksgiving-americana-behind/.
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