Adventure Story - The Story Of Thecla - The One Year Women in Christian History Devotional

SECOND CENTURY

It might be considered the first Christian romance novel. The Acts of Paul and Thecla recounts the adventures of a young woman who follows the apostle Paul through Asia Minor. It is clearly fiction, but its astonishingly early date (about AD 160) leaves some scholars wondering if it contains a germ of historical truth. For instance, it gives a vivid description of Paul (medium size, balding, crooked legs, bulbous knees, large eyes, brows that meet, a protruding nose) that might reflect an ancient eyewitness account, since it was written less than a century after Paul’s death.

As the story goes, Thecla was sitting at her window in Iconium when she heard Paul preaching in a nearby house. Transfixed by his message, she committed herself to faith and to lifelong virginity—which was a problem for her fiancé, who arranged to have Paul arrested. Thecla sneaked out to visit Paul in prison, and upon his release, she followed him as he carried the gospel to other towns.

She herself was later imprisoned for refusing the advances of a nobleman, and she was condemned to face wild beasts in the arena . . . except one lioness took a liking to her and fought off the other beasts. In another account, Thecla plunged into a pond with vicious sea lions to baptize herself, and the sea lions were miraculously killed.

Whether she really existed or not, Thecla serves as an example of an independent but faithful woman. This “runaway bride” stared down violence and humiliation in order to devote her life fully to God. Her story reminds us a bit of Daniel and friends—saved from lions and from almost-certain death, she took the opportunity to preach about Jesus as “a refuge to the tempest-tossed, a solace to the afflicted,” and the women of the town cheered her release, saying, “There is one God, the God of Thecla.”

Maybe your life is an adventure too. Okay, so you’re not jumping in a pool with ravenous sea lions, but you do have issues. Miracles are still wrought by the God of Thecla and Paul—sometimes the precious miracles of everyday life, and sometimes immense miracles beyond our wildest fantasies.

He rescues and saves his people; he performs miraculous signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.

Daniel 6:27