We read a story about Paul earlier. That was the cool part of the story. It’s the kind of story that we love to tell when it’s about us.

In the middle of the night we wake up with a vision. We have a dream that doesn’t seem like a dream. It seems like a message from God. “A man from Macedonia, from the area northeast of Greece.”

It was so real that Paul decided that it was from God. And the team headed out. Several days of walking later, they got to Phillipi. It was a Roman colony. There weren’t many Jews in town at all, not enough to have a synagogue, a gathering place. All there was was a place to pray outside of town, by the river.

So they went. And they talked about Jesus. And there was a woman who was waiting for someone to talk about Jesus.

Such a coincidence. A person that God had been preparing, and a person that God had prepared.

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But that’s the last part of that story. The first part, before the dream, was not at all that same sense of welcome and success.

In the paragraphs and weeks before this story, Paul was stuck traveling in circles.   

Paul tried to preach in the area he was traveling through, and God wouldn’t let him. Paul tried to travel into another region, and God wouldn’t let him. And then he had the vision and invitation to cross the Aegean Sea.

We don’t know how he was stopped, how he was kept from travelling. It may have been a voice, I suppose. But it may have been waking up every morning, wondering if today was the day to start doing the preaching he wanted to do, the teaching he wanted to do, and not having any freedom.

Weeks of frustration, of travel, of not being able to do the things you wanted to do. The big things of ministry.

Just Paul and Silas and Timothy stuck.

But what if that’s it. What if all that was happening during that time was Paul teaching Timothy. It felt like failure. It felt like not being able to do the big work. But it was, in the meantime, doing the deep work. Having the conversation in front of you while waiting for the conversation you want to have.

Between the answers, we are not alone.

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This is the first part of a reflection on Acts 16, prepared for our hospital chapel service.