Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
It can be cataclysmic when God’s plan for us forces a change in the whole way we’ve lived our lives up to that point.
I’ve seen it happen several times since I was called to serve as a pastor.
I have no Bible behind me when I say this, but experience leads me to assert that it’s especially difficult for men of action, or activity, to encounter a change in their circumstance that forces them to spend some time in what feels like “doing nothing.”
This is because men especially are tempted to view themselves in light of what they do or accomplish. You hear it in our conversation when we meet each other for the first time. After we’ve shaken hands, one of the first questions will be, “So, what do you do?”
If we ever get to the point of talking about family, or what’s really important to us, or what we’d really like to pursue, it’s after we’ve defined ourselves by sharing our present activity.
If the question is “Who are you?” we’ll answer with our job. I’m a rancher. I’m in construction. I’m retired military.
This isn’t great, but it’s understandable. Since the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, a man’s labor has been central to his existence. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat your food, Genesis 3:19.
If anyone in the Bible had a legitimate reason to feel displaced by a sudden shift in his own plans, I imagine the apostle Paul was that guy. In Acts 23, Jesus shows up and says to him, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”
From that point forward, Paul is never a free man again. The rest of the book encompasses about five years, and the apostle is a prisoner for all of it. The book ends with him still confined. Tradition has it that this captivity didn’t end until Nero had Paul beheaded in Rome in the late 60s A.D.
Paul spent the previous years as a man on the go. He made three large circuits throughout the region of Asia Minor that encompassed many years. He planted churches; survived riots and death threats; and was even stoned once and left for dead.
His life was marked by controversy and drama.
It must’ve been jarring to spend the last years of his life cooling his jets in the ol’ Gray Bar Hotel. We speculate that he did a lot of writing from captivity, though. Several books of the New Testament probably come from that period of relative inactivity.
It’s noteworthy that he refers to himself as “the prisoner of the Lord” in Ephesians 4:1. He was confined by the Romans, at the insistence of the Jews, but he doesn’t blame them or speak resentfully about his situation. He’s learned who and what should really define him. He’s not summed up so much by what he’s doing (which was a whole lot of sitting there) but by what the Lord was doing in him.
How do you define yourself? How does God define you? It’s of some importance that we make these match.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at:
