01.09 | Lifesaver
Acts 23:12-35
‘Now the son of Paul’s sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul.’
Acts 23:16
Me and my dad once rescued a lady from drowning.
We were on holiday in Switzerland. I’d joined my parents and younger sister during the university holidays, and we were staying in house that looked to me marvellously like a cuckoo clock. On one day, we’d driven down from the mountains to a beautiful lake. The sides of the lake were steep, and so the water went from paddling shallows to a swimming deeps in a matter of metres.
In the afternoon, I was snoozing in the sun, when my dad suddenly spoke my name with a startling urgency. I sat up, and saw a lady, floundering the water, out of her depth and clearly unable to swim. Her husband (also clearly also not a swimmer) looked at us, apparently helpless and without solutions. And so we upped and ran, like a pair of skinny British Baywatch lifeguards, and, one of us either side, managed to pull and push the lady to safety.
Today’s story is a lifesaving effort. Paul’s life is under threat.
I’ve had some people disagree with me in my life. I’ve had some people misunderstand me, critique me, or complain about me. I always hate it. It gives me anxiety.
But this is another level. This is forty people, who are so zealously opposed to Paul’s life and ministry that they are on hunger strike until they have murdered him. Forty people who want him dead. And forty people with a plan in place to do it.
When circumstances are comfortable, it’s far easier not to be anxious.1 Anxiety usually comes when our circumstances feel fragile. When we’re not in control, and we have not solutions. Anxiety usually attaches itself to vulnerabilities and powerlessness, to threat and to possible calamity.
Put another way, anxiety comes when we see our problem as greater than our God.
Some years later, when still incarcerated by the Romans,2 Paul wrote these words:
Do not be anxious about anything.
Do not be anxious about your finances. Do not be anxious about your career. Do not be anxious about your relationships. Do not be anxious about forty people waiting to take your life.
What is this? Emotional denial? Religious pretence? An impossible standard?
I think it is something different. I think it is the outcome of a life that has learned—through steady rhythms, the work of the Spirit, and the stretching work of challenges and suffering—to trust.
For the Paul who was facing these death threats had also heard, in the exact preceding verses, Jesus speak to him:
Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.
The promise was Rome. Not death on the way. He had the word of his Lord, and his Lord could be trusted.
This time, in all the fragility of the circumstances, God made it look easy to uphold His word. A lifesaver was sent, in the form of Paul’s nephew. So simple. A guy who otherwise never appears in the Scriptures has his moment here. And it is enough: the plan is thwarted. And as Paul takes to that dangerous road, he finds himself not surrounded by a murderous band of zealots, but a military escort fit for any president, prime minister, or king.
Take courage, child of God. Your circumstances may appear so fragile, and your enemies may feel numerous. Yet your God is always greater.
And He is relentlessly faithful to His word.
Reflect:
What feels fragile to me right now?
Is there a word that God has spoken to you—in Scripture or in Spirit—that gives you a promise in this moment?
Settle your heart upon this. And ask the Spirit to guard your heart in the peace of growing trust.
Pray:
Father,
My circumstances
Have never yet become ideal.
There is much I can find
To be anxious about.
And so,
It seems I need a new tactic for the soul—
Where peace becomes less contingent upon circumstance,
And more contingent upon your character.
And so, Father,
I present my requests to you today:
Heal me; protect me; provide for me; lead me.
Fill me with peace,
Fulfil your word
And lead me into life.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Job 25-28 | Psalm 105:23-36
Many of us struggle with anxiety as a disorder. In my experience of such anxiety, it no longer needs to be circumstantial, but can latch onto anything—however minor—to be anxious about.
Philippians is one of four ‘prison epistles’—written during his incarceration by the Romans. The others are Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon, and they give a beautiful insight into the thought life of Paul through these events and the years of captivity that were to come.