5/26/12

The stranger... the better!!!


What a strange thing this is!!!  I can't imagine why someone would make such a thing, except perhaps as a curiosity.  And if that is the case... it has succeeded!!! Humans are naturally such curious creatures.  We have to know the "why" of things or it just bugs us without end.  This sort of mind set began with Sophocles about four hundred years before Christ and Athens is where this thinking came from. Then the apostle Paul arrives...

Acts, Chapter 17

  16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols.  17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him.  18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also were conversing with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?”

Others said, “He seems to be advocating foreign deities,” because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.

  19 They took hold of him, and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is, which is spoken by you?  20 For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We want to know therefore what these things mean.”  21 Now all the Athenians and the strangers living there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

  22 Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things.  23 For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I announce to you. 

Paul knows what the Athenians are like and uses that to his advantage.  By pointing out their tendency to want to "cover all the bases", he refers to the unknown God statue to arouse their interest in his message.  Clever and oh, so effective!!!  We should all be so talented.  Use whatever talents God has given you to spread his message of Grace and you will ultimately be doing a GREAT WORK!!!  And, even if it means doing something as weird as the arch in the picture... Go ahead... you just might get someones attention!!!