I remember back to the time my elder sister, Kay, left with her husband, Richard, on an around Australia car trip. They drove a Mini Moke and were planning to travel for at least a year. This was back before GPS, mobile phones, email and Facebook. Not sure how we survived but we did! They were really going into the unknown at that time and this was one of those great adventures. The only contact they had with us was through postcards. It was always exciting receiving a postcard from some remote and isolated location in Australia. They would share just a snippet or two what they had seen and what they were experiencing. We kept up with them during their travels and it was always a joy to place the postcard on the refrigerator in the kitchen.
Today, in our Bible reading, we receive postcards from Paul as he travels. He is on his second missionary journey and he travels through Turkey and Greece via road and sea. He visits some rather exciting places as well as locations that may not be on the tourist map. Luke writes the postcards that provide snippets of information as to the many adventures the short term missionary team experience.
We have the joy to travel with Paul and the team from Lystra to Troas and then on to Greece via the Aegean Sea. We stop in at Philippi and witness people coming to know Jesus viz. Lydia and the Philippian jailer. We witness Paul seizing opportunity after opportunity to share the good news of Jesus to Jews and Europeans alike. We visit the coastal port of Thessalonica and hear our Paul causes a riot and is chased out of the city. And then it is onto the ancient city of Athens and to the Areopagus where Paul reasons with the intelligentsia and introduces them to the one true God. One aspect of Paul that we note here is his distress for the lost souls of the academia. How sad it is to witness learned men and women pontificating about nothing of any eternal substance! Paul passionately presents the gospel to them and many respond! I trust that you will be encouraged by these postcards from Paul and be spurred on in your walk with the Lord.