An Open Door and A Missing Brother
What to do?
Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 2:12-17
I am grateful for these kinds of texts. They show us that every decision isn’t as cut and dried as we would like, even for men like Paul. He came to Troas planning to preach the gospel and expecting to find Titus. There was a “door opened” for the preaching, but Titus was nowhere to be found. What to do?
Paul chose to leave and head to Macedonia to search for Titus. He was worried about his brother. He did so even though, as he describes it, there was “a door opened for me in the Lord to preach the gospel of Christ.” He walked away from a gospel opportunity, one given by the Lord, to go in search of his missing brother.
Did Paul choose right? After all, the Lord is the one who opened the door and Paul chose not to enter. I can’t say. All I can say is it is good to see that we aren’t alone in making difficult choices in life. And sometimes those choices involve not doing something good and godly so that we can do something else that is good and godly.
Whether Paul should have stayed or left, isn’t something I can answer. But what I can say is that the choice he made to leave didn’t mean the end of whatever God intended for his life. As a matter of fact, Paul continues in verse 14 with this great line: “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance and knowledge of him everywhere…”
We are fallible humans. As such our lives are filled with multiple missteps. We make choices and we don’t always choose right. Sometimes our choices aren’t between good and evil, but between one good and another good, and we aren’t sure whether we’ve chosen the best good.
I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t consider what the Lord’s will is. We should pray, seek counsel when we can, and seek guidance in the Scriptures. But after we, with the best of intentions and a desire to do right, have made our choice we shouldn’t fret and live in regret. We should be thankful that the God we serve can lead us in a triumphal procession. He can spread the fragrance of Christ through us everywhere we go, even when we leave Troas to go to Macedonia and we wonder if we were supposed to stay in Troas.