Lent, Day 9: Saint Patrick!

Happy Saint Patrick's day, everyone!

Saint Patrick, if you don't know, was a real man, a Christian missionary who planted by some estimates in excess of seven hundred churches in the early fifth century. He grew up in Britain, but was captured by raiders as a teenager and taken as a slave to what is now Ireland, where he tended his master's flocks for six years, until the Lord directed him to a ship that took him back to his homeland. Years later, after being trained as a priest and missionary and participating in the triumph of orthodoxy over the Pelagian heresy, he felt compelled to return to the pagan Irish with the Gospel.

Of course, many legends later developed about Patrick, who probably did not use a shamrock to explain the Trinity, and who certainly did not drive out all the snakes from Ireland! March 17 is the traditionally-accepted date of his death and thus his Feast Day.

Raise a glass today to this brother, an old-school church planter, and pray that God will raise up many more Patricks to take the Gospel to places where it has yet to take hold.