Second Time Around!

Years ago I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. It is the highest mountain in the world you can walk up. By the end, a combination of the altitude and exhaustion meant I only just made it as I forced myself to scramble to the top. When I finally got there, I found a book in which you could sign your name and put some appropriate comment. My sense of triumph was very much muted and I just wrote, “Never again!” I was determined not to be beaten by the mountain, but now that I knew what it was like, the thought of attempting it again was far worse.

“Then they returned to Lystra” (21). Astonishingly the apostle does attempt it all again, even though he knows it nearly cost him his life the first time. He lived what he preached, and they got the message: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said (22).

What have been the hardships for you on the journey into the kingdom? Luke wouldn’t want us to dismiss that as a rhetorical question but to regard it as a real matter of discipleship. The Christian who heads back to a hostile home or workplace or school knows something of this hardship. Every day he or she heads back to discouragement and hostility. The disciple in a country that for religious or ideological reasons is hostile to the Christian faith knows it. Every day she or he lives with the fear in the back of their mind of what might be done to them. Yet the apostle not only lived in these places, he preached, encouraged appointed elders, and built up the local church there. It needed that boldness for them to be able to report on the “work they had now completed” (26).

What hardships have you had to face for the Gospel? Is there a place you should return to as a witness to your faith?