St. Paul wasn’t always a saint. At his early worst he helped out in the stoning of Steven considered the Church’s first martyr. Steven after his death was seen as St Steven. But back to Paul or actually Saul who met the risen Christ while on the road to Damascus. Life changing that was and Saul’s name was changed to Paul to commerate the event, Anyway the upshot is that Paul turned out to be the chief carrier of the Christian banner to the Greek world and thus to us.

But this was not easy on him personally. One he had a physical ailment that plagued him. And he was continuously running from and hiding from the critics. He suffered beatings and imprisonment finally being beheaded in Rome for causing so many waves in the empire.

All this hardship makes a brighter point all the more bright though. And what has been inspiring me is the tale of him being in prison somewhere and being chained to a series of guards, his time there being closely supervised. And Paul never missing an opportunity even in there he was converting these guards left and right. He could probably do it in his sleep but still. They definitely had “a tiger by the tail it is plain to see”, as the old song goes. Who has who?

We are so used to hearing, “He or she has cancer”, “I have cancer”, “What if I get cancer?”, “Living with cancer”, “Dealing with cancer” or “My cancer”. Those are all the same in that they start with we are the ones that HAVE cancer. What if all of a sudden we said screw that, what if cancer HAS us. It obviously doesn’t know who it is dealing with here anymore. Who has who? That is where we should head toward and get to!
Can you see it?

Monday loves, Felipé.