79 - More Missionary Journeys

Acts 16:1-20:38

Paul is racking up the frequent preacher miles.

He gets to a number of places and starts churches that he will later send letters to:  Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth are among his stops.

These five chapters have too much action to summarize, but a few of the highlights for me:

• Paul crosses over to Macedonia, present day Greece.  This is the first missionary trip to Europe, paving the way for the rise of European Christianity.
• The first evangelism in Europe was at Philippi, and it was there that Paul met with a group of women at their place of prayer.  The first European convert was a woman named Lydia, a business woman who dealt in purple.  Given the few mentions of women by name in scripture, it is significant that a woman has that role.  She goes on to demonstrate generous hospitality to Paul twice.
• Likewise Priscilla and Aquila, wife and husband, are key partners of Paul.  He takes the pair with him to Ephesus and leaves them there to be in charge of the church.  
• One of my favorite lines in the New Testament:  when in Thessalonica, after Paul had been preaching about Jesus being raised from the dead, his opponents attacked the house where Paul was staying and dragged several Christians before the authorities.  The charge?  "These people...have been turning the world upside down..."  What a great accusation!  If only we all could be charged with turning the world upside down!
• Paul's great speech to the philosophers in Athens.  Paul tailors his argument to them in terms they can understand, and maybe it speaks to those of us in the post-Enlightenment West as well:

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. ²³ For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. ²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, ²⁵ nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. ²⁶ From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, ²⁷ so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him-- though indeed he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸ For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'

Paul preaching in Athens

What struck you most about this reading?