Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Big View: Person of Peace
Small View: Perception – Preparation – Proclamation
Doug McCoy
First Christian Church – Pleasant Hill CA
Observation: I see people of peace (or at least potential people of peace) inviting Paul to discuss his beliefs. I further see Paul taking that invitation as on opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. And I even further see that Paul’s proclamation of the Gospel was based on his perception of the people’s culture (their statues) and even used the people’s culture (their poets) to give additional power to his words.
Action: I tend to shy away from other cultures, preferring to proclaim only to those of my own culture in the language of my own culture. Today I will look for people of peace from a different culture and proclaim the Gospel in the language of that culture as much as I can.
Observation: Paul’s stepped out of his own cultural comfort zone to engage people who thought differently than him. We are not doing that anymore. We are surrounding ourselves with like minded people and writing off people who think differently. Jesus did not preach a gospel of only reaching out to people who look/think/behave like we do, he preached a gospel of reaching out to the marginalized/lost/different people in our path.
Action: I will make more of an attempt to understand the modern day statues that people worship today so I can understand better where they are at. Understanding is the best way to combat ignorance, not judgment.
Love it Marty . . . may more do so