Tuesday, May 10, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Who encourages the encourager?
They sent Barnabas to go to Antioch.
I’ve always wanted to hang out with this Barnabas guy, to be mentored by a man who loves everyone he meets and vice versa. The Encourager, they called him. He never met a stranger, they said.
When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart, for he was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.
But I also wonder how Barnabas spent his alone time. I think he was very busy, talking to one person after another who wanted to know him better because he wanted to know them. As the lights flicker out and the moon rises in the sky, at last the people leave, then Barnabas might sit under the stars and be silent. In the morning, as Jesus did, Barnabas might go to a quiet place and pray.
Except in the stories of Jesus, the Bible doesn’t talk much about these quiet times. But Barnabas the Encourager needed them too. I need them, and so do you. I am silent and still, but not as much as I would like.
For a whole year Saul and Barnabas met with the Church and taught a large number of people
Perhaps Barnabas was an extravert, as am I. Extraverts spread their enthusiasm and relational energy far and wide, and then they look for more. They get energy from all that rubbing on each other (so to speak). Or … Barnabas might have been a high-functioning introvert, as is Margaret. She is regularly the life of our Sunday School class, but she might not talk to anyone afterward for 24 hours. She is drained and needs to recover.
To the rest of us, Margaret and David probably look a lot alike. Barnabas, I think would have probed us a bit more deeply in his conversation, in his prayer, in his tentative invitations. But who probed Barnabas? Probably not Saul, who seemed to be completely single-minded and not particularly relational. Maybe Timothy, their young friend? Or perhaps Barnabas gave up his ghosts to God, in prayerful dialogues and visions. Barnabas needed a mentor too, a spiritual companion, a prayer partner, a spiritual friend.
I wonder who did his laundry. Did Barnabas get his own groceries, cook his own meals? When his sandals broke, who mended them? The giver of all good things needed also to be given to. The encourager needed encouragement. Was he able to ask for what he needed? Those around him might not have been listening for that, since he usually listened to them.
When Rich Strike (watch the overhead video) went and won the Kentucky Derby Saturday as the longest shot in the race (80-1), his trainer Eric Reed wept and laughed and didn’t try to be anybody but himself, a “charmingly rumpled Kentuckian.” That’s how I think of Barnabas, as a charmingly rumpled Antiochian, smoothing the way for his ascerbic, brilliant friend Saul. Against the longest odds, Barnabas and his gang begin to change the world.
And it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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