Happy St. Patrick’s Day from everyone at Joni and Friends! Be encouraged and hear Joni share this refresher course on the life of a great missionary, Patrick of Ireland.
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SHAUNA: Hi, I’m Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope and Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's an Irish hymn you can sing along with Joni.
(Joni sings:)
Be thou my vision O Lord of my heart,
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
JONI: Well, that's about an Irish a-hymn as you could want on St. Patrick’s Day. And it reminds me that the way people celebrate St. Patrick’s nowadays has virtually nothing to do with honoring this remarkable Christian missionary who many hundreds of years ago took the Gospel of Christ to Ireland.
I first read about Patrick's testimony in a book called “How the Irish Saved Western Civilization” by Thomas Cahill and I was so fascinated to learn that Patrick was neither Irish nor was he Catholic. He was born to a wealthy family in Britain around the year 387. Now that’s a long, long time ago and for the most part, Ireland back then was just a wild outpost filled with superstition and warring tribes. Pirates from the wilderness of what was then Ireland used to raid wealthy farms in Britain and capture livestock and people as slaves. During one of those pirate raids, 15-year-old Patrick [being a learned young man who understood Latin and bookkeeping and accounting] at the age of 15, pirates raided his farm, kidnapped him and he became a slave in Ireland for six long years. He was miserable and looked for a way to escape his tribal master. Finally, he broke free and found his way to a small port town on the coast. From there he headed to France on a boat. It was in a monastery there in France where he heard the Gospel and came to Christ. Having been forgiven, Patrick began to feel great compassion for the very people who had once enslaved him, the people in that untamed, lawless land of Ireland.
Through years of preparation, he never lost sight of one dream; and that was to travel to Ireland to share the Christian faith. Finally in his 50’s [and believe me that was old age by 5th century standards], in his 50’s he at last returned to Ireland where he led thousands of people to the Lord. His untiring zeal and contagious enthusiasm won the hearts of the heathen in Ireland and so when Patrick died on March 17th in the year 460, he was greatly mourned. Tradition has it that St. Patrick drove out all the snakes from Ireland, but since no snakes are native to that country, that tale is well, probably a likely metaphor for driving out religions in Ireland that practiced human sacrifice.
And so, whether you are wearing green today or not, I hope that you’ve been encouraged by this refresher course on the life of a great missionary, Patrick of Ireland. Truly we stand on the shoulders of giants in the Christian faith and today we celebrate the life of just one of them. You know, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to read biographies of Christian saints, not just from the 1800’s, but way back because these men have contended valiantly for the faith. So, jot down their names and read about them in the days to come because today we celebrate the life of just one of them. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, friends, from all of us at Joni and Friends.
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