I wonder if they’ll ever make a quality TV series about the journeys of Paul. Just in chapter 21, you have so many intriguing, picturesque details. The scenery would be stunning, as they are skipping along from one Greek island to another – the kinds of places people from America visit on vacations or honeymoons.

One island on the itinerary is Rhodes – home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World back in those days. The Colossus of Rhodes, 108 feet tall, a skeleton of iron, skin of bronze, inspiration to Shakespeare when he tried to describe Julius Caesar: “He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about.”

This massive wonder stood for only 60 years before being toppled by an earthquake. By the time Paul sailed by, its remains still lay strewn around on the ground. People would climb on its massive head, or try to reach around a mere finger of the colossus with both arms and couldn’t quite do it. Did Paul marvel? Did he see in its shambles a parable of what happens to all human powers – the way Percy Bysshe Shelley waxed poetic about the colossal wreck of the statue of Ramesses the Great (in his poem you read in school, “Ozymandias”)?

At Tyre, there is a lovely scene of the handful of Christians kneeling in the sand on the beach to pray. Finally they arrive at the stunning artificial harbor Herod had created at Caesarea – almost a Wonder of the World. They arrive at the house of Philip – one of the seven we read about back in Acts chapter 6. Luke includes the detail that Philip had 4 unmarried daughters – but before you start humming “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match,” he adds “who had the gift of prophecy.”

They don’t do any prophesying in our story. But an out of town guest does: Agabus arrives from Jerusalem. He grabs Paul’s belt, and binds up his own hands and feet with it. A symbolic action, depicting what will happen to Paul if he presses on to Jerusalem. No divinely gifted foresight needed: Paul was courting the same violent opposition in Jerusalem that he had himself been a part of!

When his colleagues plead with him not to go, he replies, “Why do you break my heart like this?” Something to ponder: why would their hoping to save his life break his heart? His heart of course was set on going where Christ called him, live or die, prison or any other suffering. He doesn’t seek imprisonment and death. But he’s ready.

So many stories come to mind. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel 4) refuse to bow down to the Babylonian emperor’s idol, pretty much saying “If we die, we die.” Same for Esther when she risks life and limb to rescue the Jews about to be guillotined. I’ve been reading Bonhoeffer lately. He didn’t try to get arrested or get himself martyred. But he could not help but speak out against the Führer, the concentration of total power in one mere man, fawned over like an idol. He’d found not just something to live for, but something worth dying for.

I’m unsure what this implies for us – except I’m sure that we seek safety and security above all else, especially in our post-9/11 world. Yet Jesus asks us to take risks, to be ready to bear whatever comes in the wake of being serious Christians serving our very broken world that won’t get better if the Christians all play it safe.