Clipped wings were thrown away,

made out of martyr’s clothes and articulate prayers,

he tied a string to the torso

and dropped to his knees from the high place where he was

and there Paul stood, abandoned by every care,

lost to the law, and dead to the world.

Defeated and overcome.

And we thought he had drowned in the water but

we forgot that the water was living,

and our brother reveled in it,

and a smile rose up in the bubbles made by his baptism.

He rolled up his pharasaical persona,

and the cloth that marked his knowledge;

tucked them at the bottom of his bag.

We asked him why he kept them,

til he disguised himself and went to synagogue looking to capture the hearts of the consul and the casual rule followers,

that they would unequivocally be brought into the heart of the Lord Christ.

That they would share his life.

Paul was a man who had both seen a great light,

and who had closed his eyes whenever he mentioned it.

Now it seems Paul closes his eyes when he talks about anything at all.

In-articulate, sensitive, and private,

an ornate man becomes a plain man when he is overcome by the complexity of God.

It is not hopelessness, it is humility.

And that it is a beautiful loss to be presented with such surpassing value.

Desiring every day to sit with the Greeks and to look like a heathen or an unworthy gentile,

Paul changed his name quick,

but it was the Lord’s way of transforming;

of using unworthy wings in a trash heap and making them fly;

of using dusty bones in a wasteland and filling them with the ruddy colors of flesh and breath.

Oh Paul, the brother that you are.

- Timothy