PHOTO: Cliffs of Moher (Ireland.com)
St. Patrick told his secretary, “Book me a night in a good hotel overlooking The Cliffs of Moher. Actually, make it two nights and make sure the room has a Jacuzzi and a good spa. My back’s been killing me and I’ve gotta soak my feet.”
In today’s environment, it wouldn’t be that unusual for an itinerant preacher of even modest means to travel well. However, in Patrick’s time, it was a more rugged existence. It is possible that his feet were prepared for the thousands of miles of networking, preaching, converting and baptizing from walking sheep around as a captive shepherd on the Emerald Isle for six long years in every kind of weather and condition. Only God knows.
Patrick said:
“I spend myself for you, so that you may have me for yours. I have travelled everywhere among you for your own sake, in many dangers, and even to the furthest parts where nobody lived beyond, and where nobody ever went to baptise and to ordain clerics or to bring people to fulfilment.
“It is only by God’s gift that I diligently and most willingly did all of this for your good. At times I gave gifts to kings, over and above what I paid to their sons who travelled with me. Despite this, they took me and my companions prisoner, and very much wanted to kill me, but the time had not yet come. They stole everything they found in our possession, and they bound me in iron. On the fourteenth day, the Lord set me free from their power; all our possessions were returned to us for God’s sake, and for the sake of the close friendship we had had previously. You know yourselves how much I expended on those who were the judges in those regions which I most frequently visited.”
Patrick’s secretary more likely heard, “No Jacuzzi’s here, but we did dunk 57 pagans under the water in baptism.”
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Suffering and traveling for Christ is sometimes the clearest portal to heaven because we identify with his love for sinners - the same love He had for us before we knew him. Patrick would never forget how God saved him. That was his constant portal every time he rubbed his soar feet.
‘I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’...For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life… Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea…the Son of Man has no place to lay his head... But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us...think of what you were when you were called...What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?
Acts 9:16 NIV, John 3:16 NKJV, 2 Corinthians 11:25 NIV, Luke 9:58Romans 5:8 NIV, 1 Corinthians 1:26, Romans 6:21