Paul always remembered the generosity of the Christians at Philippi.

Monday, 5/10/15

If we mentally accompany Paul and Luke on their journeys, it will have us feeling that we are part of it all. Like, Luke mentions that Philippi was a Roman colony, and we wonder if he was thinking that it was there that  eighty-five years earlier Mark Anthony had caught up with Brutus, Caesar’s assassin.

Isn’t it charming the way Luke describes them taking a Sabbath walk along a river bank, looking for a place where people might gather for prayer? And, right enough, they came on a group using the pleasant scene to inspire their devotions. 

Luke wrote that Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth from Thyatira. Bible critics once pointed out that this whole story had to be fictional, since there was no source for purple dye in Thyatira that was an inland city. But Archaeologists have since turned up an original island city of Thyatira where the squid provided cloth merchants with purple dye.

Paul always prided himself in paying his own way by using the week days to work at his trade of tent making. Philippi, however, was the one place where Paul had to let the people take care of his needs. Lydia said that she had to repay Paul for bringing her the Faith, and you know how some women can be.