I am 63 years old now.
But a long time ago, when I was 27, my life changed in a big way.
I had made a mess of things, having tasted too freely of the pleasures of this world. My own lusts and weaknesses were dragging me down into a terrible moshpit of overstimulated sensuous confusion.
When I finally hit bottom, I turned to Jesus and he dragged me up out of all that depravity. He set my feet upon a rock,
and gave me a new start in life.
After a while, a year or so, of getting straightened by God and his ways and means committee, I got some definite direction. Many good things happened during those days. I met Pat, who became my life-mate, and has been so for 35 years, as of yesterday, January 26, 2015.
We gravitated to a small town in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, USA; there we joined a little New Testament church and linked up with some other like-minded Christians, many of whom were, like me, refugees from the rat-race world of 1979.
Our little flock was led, New Testament style, by a pastor, Tom.
Tom had read the Scriptures quite a bit, a lot more than I had, and he was teaching us about the message of the gospel proclaimed therein.
We had a little community of believers--all of us young, in our 20s and 30s mostly--and we were determined to do things right to live in Christian community, doing it "by the book."
The "book" being the Bible.
It was a great life. Still is, but there have been some changes.
Tom taught us quite a bit from a New Testament book called the Acts. In the Bible, Acts is the first book after the four gospels.
We learned a lot. Pat and I like to think we had a lot going for us, raising our three children in a little Christian bubble of the Holy Spirit's (and our) construction.
Tom was heavy into the book of Acts. Acts of the Apostles.
A very important part of that great narrative in Acts is this:
The eleven men (of the original "twelve apostles") who walked this earth alongside Jesus stayed in Judea after Jesus' death by crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. Then the Lord brought forth, from the Pharisee sect of the Jews, a really zealous preacher who spent most of his life traveling in the eastern Mediterranean, delivering the message of Jesus to his fellow Jews, but also to Greeks and Asians and anyone else who would listen.
I must say that, over those first twenty or so years of living in tight Christian community and implementing the gospel as preached by our pastor Tom, then Ben and others, I got a little tired of hearing about Paul all the time.
Paul this, and Paul that. What about the main man, Yeshua haMeschiach, Jesus?
But this is no simple question to answer, although the gospel itself is simple--it had to be, so that all men and women could comprehend it and receive it.
This is what frustrates intelligent people so much about the gospel--that it is so dam simple.
The gospel had to be simple so that it could be accessible to all men and women. The message is: Jesus was crucified by men for our sin (he had no sin of his own) so that we could believe in his resurrection and be rejoined with God.
Now it just so happens that today, as I write this, Pat and I are in Athens, a great city of the world. What a city! Such a city.
I love the place.
And because of what we saw and heard yesterday from Jimmy, who led us through a tour around the Aereopagus and the Acropolis, I have gained a new appreciation for old brother Paul, who traveled through here about 1,950 years ago.
Because, as Jimmy put it, Paul stood at the Aereopagus, the place where seekers gathered on a hillside in Athens, and he told all those wise folks that the "unknown" God whose identity and works so were so elusive to them--this unknown God-- had indeed been revealed to us through the eternal life of Jesus, the Christ, Messiah.
And, as Jimmy put it, Paul sought to convert these Greeks (who worshipped a multiplicity of gods) into Christians. Good luck with that, Paul!
Here's the rock from the top of which Paul probably addressed the Athenian seekers:
Quite a task that was, that Paul took unto himself.
And so I learned yesterday that Paul wasn't such a stodgy old religious guy. Rather, he was spiritual revolutionary, trying to turn the religious world upside down. And because of his trailblazing work, and the work of many others who have followed him through history, the gospel of Jesus has trickled through history and time to me, an American wandering through the city of Athens in the year 2015. Pretty revolutionary stuff. Paul did indeed "turn the world upside down."
I hope you an relate. Thanks for stopping by.
Glass Chimera
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