Welcome Dear Readers to Gregory’s Vacation Bible School. Today Gregory was throwing spit wads so the teacher made him get up in front of the class and tell the story of the time Paul sailed to Rome.
Let’s listen in shall we?
Paul Sails for Rome
Today, our story begins just after the Apostle Paul has been released from prison in the town of Caesarea (home of the Caesarea Salad) after a little misunderstanding between Paul and some Asian Jews or perhaps they were Jewish Asians (Some scholars believe that was the crux of the misunderstanding right there).
Anyway, Julius, a Roman Centurion, and possibly founder of Orange Julius, was to guard Paul while they sailed to Rome where Paul was to stand trial. Julius was kind to Paul and let him drink all the Orange Julius he wanted on their voyage.
But as biblical sailing luck would have it, there soon arose a terrible storm. So in keeping with biblical navigational law, everyone agreed that this would be a perfect time to set sail out onto the open sea, while at the same time double-checking that all the lifeboats were left safely on shore.
Paul tried to talk them all out of it, but they failed to heed his advice — even though Paul’s info came from his special ability to accurately predict weather conditions due to his apostle status with “The Big Cheese and The Little Cheese who were one in the same Cheese.”
The next thing you know, an extraordinarily strong wind kicked up — known as the North-Easter Wind — which was much worse than it sounded.
It just kept blowing and blowing and blowing so that by the next day everybody starting throwing cargo and/or up overboard. Julius even had to dump his oranges.
“Hey listen, I just threw an entire case of Cesearea Salad Dressing overboard, we all have to make sacrifices, Julius.”
But that didn’t help, so they decided to throw the ship’s cutting-edge, navigational devices overboard, which, in those days, consisted of an anchor, a sun-dial and a magical goat purported to know right from left.
Finally, they gave up and lowered the sail and let the ship be carried off by the wind, and that’s when Paul decided it would be the perfect time to get up and make a speech starting with “I hate to say I told you so but . . . ”
Before anyone could get close enough to wring Paul’s neck, he quickly explained that he had been visited by an angel of The Big Cheese who said they would lose the ship but not their lives.
After that, Paul insisted everyone have a nice meal together, which they did, except for Julius who was still pouting about his oranges. Then they threw the rest of the wheat overboard just for kicks and giggles.
Shortly thereafter, they spotted the shoreline of Malta, the ship broke apart, and everybody swam or kick floated to shore, and they all celebrated with the Maltan natives by partaking in a three-day fire, the biblical equivalent of a Luau.
While Paul was collecting firewood, a snake bit his hand and everyone took time out from the festivities to watch Paul die. But not only did he not die, he felt so good he went ahead and healed everyone on the island of dysentery. (They even changed the name of the Island of Malta to the Island of Dysentery but changed it back when tourism started dropping off.)
Paul did make it a point, however, not to drink any of the water after that.
And there you have it! This week’s edition of Gregory’s Vacation Bible School. Be sure and check back next week for more biblical adventures.
Until next time . . . I love you
Linda Vernon Humor 