Good morning. An
admonition we all need at times: be anxious for nothing. But you don’t know my
circumstances… It doesn’t matter, if we are standing firm in the Lord. When we
are anxious, we’re taking all the responsibility for solving the problem upon
ourselves. We think that the solution is up to us. OK smarty-pants, what should
we do? In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your
requests be made known to God. Seriously, and that’s it? Notice that it says
“with thanksgiving“. We are thanking God for the solution, even when we are in
the midst of the dilemma. By the way, the Greek word for thanksgiving here is
the one from which the word Eucharist is derived. Sadly our normal procedure
is: we try to solve the problem in our own ability, and then scream “help!” to
God when everything messes up. In the Old Testament, King Asa became severely
diseased in his feet. “Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but
the physicians.“ It’s not that we should not go to the doctors; it’s that we
should give God first shot at it. Next time we will see what happens when we do
make our requests known to God with thanksgiving.
When considerable time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous, since even the fast was already over, Paul began to admonish them to not continue, because he perceived that not only would there be a loss of the cargo but also of their lives.
Good morning. When it was decided that we would sail for Italy, they proceeded to deliver Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion. Notice that “we“ returns. Luke has not been mentioned during the entire two years that Paul was at Caesarea. I guess it is safe to assume that he was in the area during this time. We will leave out the names of a bunch of places where they passed. They had sailed for a good many days and began to have trouble with the wind. This was a warning of what was about to happen. When considerable time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous, since even the fast (Day of Atonement) was already over, Paul began to admonish them to not continue, because he perceived that not only would there be a loss of the cargo but also of their lives. The centurion was more persuaded by the pilot and the captain of the ship than by what was being said by Paul. They did not want to get stuck for the winter in the port where they were located. They actually were only g...
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