Encouraged

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

ENCOURAGED

Acts 28:11-16

11 After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island. It was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. 12 We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. 13 From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. 14 There we found some brothers who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome. 15 The brothers there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these men Paul thanked God and was encouraged. 16 When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him.

NIV

They spent three months on this island as we can see they were not the only travelers that wintered on there. This would indicate this was not some remote off the route island all together, although for them it was off their desired course. Other ships that may have normally traveled these waters were wintered at this island as well and they found one that would take them as passengers. We are not sure about all the crew of that broken ship, but it would seem that the centurion, his soldiers, Paul and his companions were the ones who sought passage aboard this Alexandrian ship. We now see that Paul finally made it to Rome. Brothers greeted him when he arrived. We have to assume that means brothers in Christ, rather than Jews. We do not know exactly how Christianity came to Rome except we know men from every nation were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost and heard all the Apostles praising God in their own language, as well as they heard Peters sermon. It would be expected that some of these men were from Rome and returned as believers in Christ, spreading the word among others in the area. From historic records we know Appius is about fifty two miles from Rome and the Three Taverns about thirty three and it was on the way from Appius to Rome. This is quite a distant to travel to simply meet the Apostle Paul. Certainly he has a rather robust reputation for men to travel that kind of distance to meet him. Paul thanked God and was encouraged when he saw them. This could be our life lesson. We do not know the purpose these men came from so far to meet Paul, perhaps they just wanted to see such a great man, or perhaps they had heard of all his hardships in getting to Rome and wanted to show him it was worth the journey, but whatever the reason, Paul was the encouraged by their sight. There may be people who need to be encouraged, people we encounter in our daily journeys. There may be times when we are inspired to travel some distance and in so meet someone who needs to be encourage just by the sight of us. Perhaps we are the ones who need that encouragement by someone else. Either way fellow believers should be encouraged by other fellow believers. We should thank God that they believe in Jesus Christ. We do not know what kind of personality conflicts occurred between Paul and other believers? We are not privy to any of that sort of information. We do know there were disagreements about faith, but not about how they felt about each other, except they were encouraged. Do we allow personality conflicts to exist that keep us from encouraging or being encouraged? Do we allow discontentment over the style of worship, or the color of the carpet or the size of the church or anything else that would hinder us from being encouraged or from being an encouragement to other believer? Just the sight of them encouraged Paul and he thanked God for them. This is how it should be. If we are always thanking God for our fellow believers how can we not be encouraged by them and be an encouragement to them?