A man...

There was a man on the Areopagus that day that really struck me. There were other people there too, but this man wasn't part of some tour group or a tourist or anything. This man, whoever he was, made me think. He was most likely drunk or high. As he tried to talk to us his speech was garbled such that I couldn't tell if he was speaking Greek or something else. He seemed king of friendly, but my female companion and myself know better than to get mixed up with drugged foreign men. All in all, though, I was intrigued with the thoughts of what St. Paul would have done had he been there now, in this modern day. This man was the kind of man that Jesus gathered up, that the disciples would have healed, that Paul might have preached to. This man was here, on the Areopagus, and this city was stretched out before us, and they were both lost. What would Paul have thought standing there almost 2000 years later? What would Paul have done for this man? It seemed both hopeless and inspiring.

Paul's speech on the Areopagus (Thanks to blueletterbible.org [RSV])

Acts 17:24-30

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.

And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.'

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead."