Final Goodbyes

"... he knelt down with all of them and prayed.  They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him... After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea..."

If you had been given some bad news and didn't know how much longer you had to live, who would you want to spend time with?

When people get this kind of news, one of the first things they do is get things squared away at work, then they focus on having time to spend with family and friends.  In their darkest hours, they want their closest friends and immediate family nearby.  It's what Jesus did the last week of His life, and it's what the apostle Paul did when he feared his life was drawing to a close.

Paul spent quite a bit of time in jail or in shackles or being hustled out of cities because his friends feared for his life.  Even though he lived there for a couple of years, the city of Ephesus was no exception.

Like many of the cities Paul visited, Ephesus was a large cosmopolitan city on the sea.  There was a lot of trade and commercial activity as well as a lot of religious activity.  Ephesus was home to the temple of Artemis, the goddess of fertility.  This didn't intimidate Paul, and he did what he normally did - went to the synagogue to reason with the Jews, then turned his attention to the Gentiles and established a church.

Paul's first visit to Ephesus was at the end of his second missionary journey, and it was little more than a "drive-by."  His message was well-received and the people wanted him to stay longer but Paul's schedule was tight so he kept going.  But he left his friends Priscilla and Aquila behind to minister to them.

Paul revisited Ephesus on his third missionary journey and he lived there for a couple of years.  His ministry was fruitful in Asia Minor, so fruitful that it was cutting into the local economy.

Local craftsmen made a lot of money selling statues and temple articles to people who came to visit the temple.  With people coming to faith in Jesus, the temple business dropped off and it angered the local craftsmen who created a ruckus/riot in the city.  After much shouting and pushing and confusion, Paul's buddies hustled him out of the city and sent him on through Macedonia.  His third missionary journey continued but it wasn't easy.  Not only did Paul face opposition from the locals, he had problems with the Jewish leaders in each city.

Paul had made no small number of enemies among the Jewish leaders in the various cities he visited.  When he visited the synagogues and tried to reason with the leaders about who Jesus was, his message fell on deaf ears... that were attached to hard hearts and furious minds.  Word made it back to the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem that Paul, who was once a well-respected Pharisee, was speaking against their laws and traditions and they wanted him STOPPED.  In fact, many of them wanted to kill him.  So at the end of his journey, Paul headed back to Jerusalem to go on trial before the Jewish leaders.

As he made his way to Jerusalem, Paul made a couple of stops to visit with friends he had made along the way. It wasn't safe for him to return to Ephesus, so he asked the church to visit him a little way down the coast at Miletus.  It was here they had their tearful goodbye and escorted Paul and his companions to their ship.

Paul loved his friends in Ephesus so much that he wrote a letter to them when he was under house arrest in Rome.  Unlike many of his letters, this one doesn't address problems or controversies in the church.  The letter to the Ephesians was intended to build them up in their faith.  The first half of the letter described who they were in Christ and the blessings they had because of Him, and the second half detailed how they were to live that out in their relationships.

Proverbs 17:17 tells us "A friend loves at all times..." but I love how that verse is translated in The Message: "Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble."  We will always have troubles and hardships in life, but we don't have to face them by ourselves.  When we invest ourselves in the lives of others, the return we receive on that investment is immeasurable.  And some of those friends may well be the ones we call to us in our darkest hours.