When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. (Acts 18:26)
In PBS’s acclaimed series Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil is an English earl’s daughter who marries her family’s Irish chauffeur, Branson. Their love overcomes clashing social and ethnic backgrounds. That may be roughly the situation with Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18. Some suggest that she’s a Roman noblewoman; he is her family’s Jewish ex-slave.* They befriend Paul, becoming his coworkers.
Now go back to Downton Abbey and throw in another Irishman: brilliant Oxford don and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. Unlike Sybil and Branson, he’s not fictional, but let’s pretend he could meet them. That would be like what happened in Acts 18 when a Jew called Apollos, arrived at Ephesus. He hailed from the renowned university town of Alexandria and knew how to use his mind and mouth for the cause of truth. But educated as he was, he didn’t know as much about Christ as Priscilla and Aquila, so they filled him in.
Imagine an Oxford prof willing to learn from an aristocrat’s daughter and her former driver! Yet Apollos was smart enough to stay teachable. Just as Lady Priscilla had seen marriage potential in Aquila, they both saw gospel potential in Apollos, and he saw kingdom wisdom in them. What do you see in those around you?
Pray to recognize people to learn from and invest in spiritually.
Jerome Van Kuiken is a missionary kid, a pastor’s kid, and dean of the School of Ministry and Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.
*Reta Halteman Finger, Roman House Churches for Today: A Practical Guide for Small Groups, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 18–19.
© 2022 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
