Today, I am reading and commenting on  Acts 14-16.

The first thing which struck me today was that Paul was stoned in the city of Lystra, drug out of the city, and left for dead.  A short time later, he got up, re-entered the city, then the next day he left and traveled to Derbe.  Now, I have never been stoned, but I have been hit by rocks thrown at me (the thrower didn’t intend to hit me) and that hurts, a lot.  I also have some understanding of what happens when a crowd stones someone.  Paul would have been pretty seriously injured.  The other thing that stood out to me is that travel in the first century A.D. was not like it is today.  Travel then was comparatively difficult.  You didn’t just get in a car, or hop on a bus.  Even travel by carriage was considerably more strenuous than most travel today.  Later in today’s passage we see an account of where Paul and Silas were beaten with rods and thrown in prison.  Their injuries were such that their wounds still warranted washing many hours later.   Which brings me back to something Paul and Barnabas said to those who followed their teaching: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”  We see that Paul knew what he was talking about when he said that.  And throughout the Book of Acts he shows that those hardships did not diminish his enthusiasm for preaching the Gospel.  Let us follow his example.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.