The following are actual responses from comment cards given to the staff members at Bridger Wilderness Area in 1996: But I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that either." Illustration: Upon accepting an award, the late Jack Benny once remarked, "I really don't deserve this. And yet billions have and are reading Paul’s letters, memorizing passages and following the instructions as if Paul was still preaching his passionate message in our culture. In places like Athens, Ephesus, and Corinth, the once powerful temples and the religion of the Greek gods that so dominated his culture are in ruins. After all, those early letters were filled with corrections, some of them quite harsh.īut in reality, Paul’s work changed the world. To read Paul’s letters to those churches, one might come away with the idea that Paul was continually frustrated, and that his work wasn’t very successful. In fact, the only thing that seemed to discourage Paul were the problems in his young churches. He’d been the focus of riots and death threats, and after one harrowing, near-death experience, he was snake bitten! His focus, energy, and resilience were nearly frightening. He’d been scored, chased, scandalized and slandered. Other problems along the way? Try being stoned, scourged (five times), and being beaten with fists, rods and words.
Three times Paul was shipwrecked, and he once spent a full day – “a night and a day,” as he puts it – on the open sea. The apostle Paul is the New Testament’s version of an “unsinkable Molly Brown.” As was the case for the Titanic’s most famous survivor, Paul simply refused to go down with the ship … literally.
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