Strange Circumstances

Galatians 4:13-14  ¹³ As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, ¹⁴ and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.

There are so many circumstances in life that seem to take us by surprise. Illness often takes us by surprise. We are moving along and then, wham, we are sick. And for a season it can seem as though things will never get back to normal. You might be this tired for the rest of your life.

It can be easy to get our eyes on the circumstance and loose hope. So it can be difficult in the middle of the circumstance to step back and try to see how the LORD is using and will use the circumstance to accomplish His purpose in us. For all we can see is the circumstance. And if this is all there is, then hopelessness fits.

We read in our text for today that Paul was struck with an illness, and that illness was the reason he preached in the city of Galatia. I always thought of Paul being a person who planned his visits, had a strategy for reaching people and was led by the Spirit in his ministry endeavors. But a sickness intervened!

What I find interesting is that Paul’s illness affected the Galatians. They were somehow involved with Paul’s illness. Paul says it was a trial for them. We don’t know what the sickness was, but somehow caring for Paul became a burden they chose to bear.

But it is worse than that. The illness itself was something that Paul believed could result in contempt or scorn by those who learned of the illness. It wasn’t simply the flu. The particular illness carried a negative connotation to it. Those who had it were looked down upon, considered somehow spiritually or physically an outcast.

I remember when AIDS first hit the scene. There were talks of quarantining the community from which the outbreak was coming. But that was rejected by the political power at the time. But the diagnosis of AIDS brought contempt and scorn by the larger society.

For Paul, what could have been contempt and scorn actually became welcome in the greatest possible way. The Galatian’s didn’t react to the surface issue. They looked beyond the illness and welcomed Paul, and subsequently welcomed Christ into their lives.