Friday, May 17, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The weather in Caesarea
Outside on the patio our basil is growing to beat the band. On the other side of the walk behind our apartments an ancient juniper touts two green branches, Â somehow growing out of a gnarly, mostly dead trunk. Our juniper grows up from deep roots and through an old wood slat fence, redwood stained, dividing us from the church parking lot.
The screen door is open now, and a great Texas thunderstorm is pouring down. There’s a hole in the gutter, and torrents of rain – buckets, ringing as loud as a locomotive. We are inside the screen. Safe and dry. Miles and Jasper finish up their mini-banana milk shakes. With whole milk.
We slept like rocks this afternoon, at least Jasper and I did. I can’t speak for Miles and Grandma. Now I’m thinking about traveling conditions to north Austin, because we’re headed to meet their parents at a soul food restaurant for dinner.
And then I thought how it would have been for kings and queens, traveling across dry deserts and high mountains to the sea, when a sudden thunderstorm shook them on their camels, or their elephants, or their stallions. Could there have been a thunderstorm? Would they have been prepared? There was no weather station, no internet, and no cell phone. Not in AD 55.
King Agrippa (one of the Herods) and his queen Bernice (another one of the Herods) arrived in Caesarea to visit with Festus, who succeeded Felix, who succeeded Pontius Pilate years before as the governor/prefect/procurator of Judea. Rome was not built in a day. And they remade their provinces time after time.
Judea especially required remaking more than once, because those Zealots and other angry Israelites didn’t settle easily for serfdom. They had history. God forced the pharoah to release his slaves, the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel, and leave Egypt for the country God gave them, the Promised Land named after their ancestor Israel. Once there, they had no plans to leave. The promises of God kept their backs straight, and their hands busy.
The Romans had no idea what they were getting into, although around AD 70 they stood up for their Roman selves, beat down the rebels and destroyed the Jews’ temple – the building Old King Herod was so proud of, the building he stayed up nights just looking at in the moonlight, where all good Jews prayed three times a day, bought pigeons and lambs, and handed them to the blood priests to sacrifice.
When you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted. But when you grow old you will stretch out your hands, someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
Paul has been waiting two years, because God gave him no cause to move. He waited to sail for Rome, because he had asked for a hearing before Caesar. “You must testify about me in Rome,” God told Paul (Acts 23:11). With God’s words quietly sitting in his mind, Paul was content.
But now he is about embark on his last journey, after his words to Festus, Agrippa and Bernice. King Agrippa especially listened from his spirit, and Paul’s words moved him.
Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?
For indeed the king was being persuaded. His sympathies already lay with Paul, and now his beliefs were moving toward Jesus.
This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.
But Paul, he was already free. Free within his chains.
Free indeed.
The Holy Spirit will teach you everything and remind you of all I told you.
(Acts 25, Psalm 103, John 14, John 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
