Tommy Mann

One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is Wind and Window Flower, which goes in part like this: Lovers, forget your love, and list to the love of these: She a window flower, and he a winter breeze. Perchance he half prevailed to win her for the flight, From the fire-lit looking glass and warm stove-window light. But the flower leaned aside and thought of naught to say, And morning found the breeze a hundred miles away.* Despite being a person who likes to be on stage, I have always struggled in one-on-one conversations. I would rather talk to a thousand people than one person. In high school I often used this poem as motivation to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I never wanted to be like that flower, who, thinking of nothing to say, missed out on what could have been a life-changing relationship. Today this poem reminds me to share the gospel. If I choose to keep my mouth closed, morning might find that person a hundred miles away. ...

There is a strange scene recorded in Acts 14. Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary journey, in a city known as Lystra. Lystra is in modern day Turkey and was in close proximity to Phrygia. In Lystra the Holy Spirit allowed Paul to heal a man who was crippled. When the town’s people saw the miracle they cried out, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men (v.11)!” They called the missionary duo Zeus and Hermes (some translations say Mercury and Jupiter, which were their Roman counterparts), and began to worship them by offering sacrifices. Paul and Barnabas rushed to stop them, pleading, “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God…” While this is a humorous scene, a little history can shine some light here. In 8 AD, approximately 40 years prior to this event, Ovid published The Metamorphoses, which is considered to be one o...