Come over and help us

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”  Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. -  Acts 16:9-10

This words are familiar to anyone who has studied missions at all. Is it the famous Macedonian call by which God called Paul and his team to a whole new field and to their ‘uttermost parts of the earth.’

On this St Patrick’s Day I want to look at another similar call about 300 years later.

‘I saw in the night the vision of a man, whose name was Victoricus, coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, `The voice of the Irish'; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice---they were those beside the Wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea---and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: `We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more.' And I was quite broken in heart, and could read no further, and so I woke up.’ – Patrick’s ‘Confession’

This is always a personal blessing to me. I am not sure about dreams and visions and all that, but I have no reason to doubt that God can use anything to call people to where He wants them, and this call certainly was Biblical. Our own call was not a vision, but an Irishman over lunch saying ‘come over and help us.’ There was no doubt in my mind and still no doubt today about the reality of that call.

We have been discouraged. Sometimes we have wondered ‘is this really where we need to be?’ But then another section from Patrick’s Confession comes to mind.

'I could wish to leave them to go to Britain. I would willingly do this, and am prepared for this, as if to visit my home country and my parents. Not only that, but I would like to go to Gaul to visit the brothers and to see the faces of the saints of my Lord. God knows what I would dearly like to do. But I am bound in the Spirit, who assures me that if I were to do this, I would be held guilty. And I fear, also, to lose the work which I began – not so much I as Christ the Lord, who told me to come here to be with these people for the rest of my life. May the Lord will it, and protect me from every wrong path, so that I do not sin before him.'

May indeed the Lord will it protect me from every wrong path, so that I do not sin before Him.