Shipwrecked

You are Paul, a one-time Jewish Pharisee who was known for arresting Christians, turned Christian missionary, known for starting churches. You have traveled all around what is modern-day Middle East with some of your buddies. At this point, you have been arrested for something that you didn’t do. When it comes down to it, the real reason that you have been arrested is because you have been preaching about Jesus. Although you are a Jew by race, you are also a Roman citizen, which means that you have rights that others in the area don’t have. You take full advantage of these rights and have already gone to a few leaders to try your case and at this time you are being transported to Rome so you can have your case brought before Caesar for the final say.

You start your trip to the city of Rome, the place that you have desperately wanted to go to for a long time. Picture New York City meets Washington D.C., this is the largest city in the entire Roman Empire, and the capital city of arguably the most powerful nation in all of human history. Prison guards load you onto a boat with other prisoners. As you take off you notice a sense of doom, nobody else notices it but the wind is pushing against you most of the time that you are at sea. You know that this is setting up perfectly for a disaster. You sail slowly for multiple days as your every step is being watched by guards. Unable to make it any farther, the captain decides to stop in a town called Fair Havens. Seems like a fitting place to get out of danger.

When the captain decides that it is time to continue, you get nervous. You realize that by this point the trip would be dangerous and you can no longer stay quiet. You go to the captain and the head prison guard and tell them “Sirs, I think this trip will be with injury and much loss, not only to the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.” Even though you are a prisoner the head prison guard likes you and trusts you. Surely if you are the one that is advising against it and telling them that this is dangerous they will listen to you. But as I guess you should have expected, the head prison guard listens instead to the captain of the ship. He loads you and the other prisoners up and you set sail once again hoping to make it to a town called Phoenix to spend a warm winter in the desert before continuing on to Rome. Yes, the town is really called Phoenix and yes I know it isn’t the same Phoenix.

Shortly after you set sail the head prison guard regrets not taking your advice. The ship is hit by a big storm. The wind pushes the boat wherever it wants the boat to go like a chew toy in the grips of a pit. It is no longer prisoner or guard as everyone does what they can to try to prevent the death of everyone on board. You watch as everyone starts tossing everything that they can live without off of the boat in hopes that having less weight will keep the boat from sinking. After multiple days of being in the storm and not seeing any sunlight or a break, everyone finally gives up all hope of survival.

Seeing the morale of everyone on board and knowing that everyone had been so focused on surviving the storm that they had all forgotten to eat you take your chance to say what is on your mind and tell them “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from where we were and brought this injury and loss. Yet now I urge you to cheer up, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ So cheer up, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island.” Translation, we’re gonna crash.

After 2 weeks of being tortured by the storm, some of the sailors decided that they had enough of this and decided to escape on the lifeboats. At seeing this you tell the guards that if those sailors leave the boat then they themselves can’t be saved. Filled with fear and trusting you after seeing what happened the last time they didn’t listen to you, they cut the ropes to the lifeboats causing the sailors to be stuck on the ship. Then you gather everyone together. I'm still impressed that you managed to do this as a prisoner, you gather everyone together and encourage them to eat and you make sure to lead by example as you gladly take the first thing of food. After everyone has eaten enough you all throw the rest of the food off of the ship.

The next day you notice a beach. The captain decides to try to land the ship on the beach, none of you are opposed to this idea as you have all had enough of this boat for one lifetime. The captain has the crew steer the ship towards the beach as you pick up speed. It’s all smooth sailing for a few minutes then out of nowhere you are forced forward as the ship suddenly stops. Y’all have just hit a reef and the ship is now stuck. Fearing that you and the other prisoners are going to escape, the guards plan to kill all of the prisoners. Fortunately, you and the head guard get along just fine and to save you the head guard tells the other guards to not harm the prisoners, saving your life. Then he orders everyone to go to the shore, for those who can swim he tells them to swim for land and for those who can’t, he tells them to find planks to float to shore on.

Once you make it to land you learn from the terrified and surprised locals that you are on an island called Malta. You notice that the locals are surprisingly kind to a bunch of prisoners who just came off of a shipwreck. The case could even be made that the locals saved your life. You are wet and cold from the water and it is raining and cold outside so the odds of getting warm are low. But the locals get a fire started, you help by gathering some wood to put on the fire. As you put the wood into the fire, a venomous snake that was lying in the pile of sticks comes out and bites your hand. It doesn’t just give you a warning bite. No, it's biting to kill, it isn’t letting go and is just dangling from your hand. Your hand is throbbing from the pain of being stabbed by its fangs. You overhear the locals talking about how you are a dead man but you simply shake your hand violently to force the snake to fall into the fire. Then you continue like nothing happened.