Ordinary Days #20: Rescued

 The islanders showed us

    unusual kindness. (Acts 28:2)

It happened to us that first full day on the Island. When we returned to our third floor condo following an afternoon of frolicking about in the ocean and the pool; we found ourselves locked out. It dawned on us slowly. Eventually we sorted it out. There were two lanyards: one for the condo and the other for the mail box. In our excited state we grabbed the wrong lanyard. We could get into the mail box, but not the “Penthouse,” as they called the third floor; not because it is much different from floors one and two, but because it is the top floor.

An hour or so into it, we concluded there simply was no way back into our 3^rd story penthouse. There were layers of complication—like we had left our phones (except for Joanna) and credit cards and car keys and stuff in the condo thinking only of sand and sea. Maybe that’s the price we had to pay for pretending like we were penthouse kind of people. It’s as if those in the know said, “You don’t belong here!” There is truth enough to that. We weren’t exactly supposed to be there. By surprise, we found ourselves penthouse dwellers for a week; and, not even 24hrs into it, we messed up, locked out due to our exuberant foolishness.

But, “the islanders showed us unusual kindness (philanthrōpia).”  One of the Islanders scooted up a precarious three story ladder, provided by the Kona Fire Department, to our lanai from which he was free to enter since, providentially, we left the lanai doors open. Our Island rescuers could not have been more kind. They could have made fun and washed their hands of us. But instead, they showed us penthouse pretenders, simple human kindness.

It reminded me some of the Apostle’s rescue. Adrift on “planks and pieces of the ship’s wreckage,” all 276 passengers, including the Apostle Paul and Dr. Luke, were washed up onto the shore of a small island about 80 miles south Sicily called Malta. Today, the shore where the islanders “showed unusual kindness (philanthrōpia),” is called “The Bay of Saint Paul.” As Luke narrates the voyage from Jerusalem/Caesarea to Malta, there is some irony between the simple human kindness (philanthrōpia, from which we get our word “philanthropy”) of these Malta islanders, and the Roman arrogance (hubris 27:10&21 from which we get our word “hubris”) of the ship’s command that resulted in wreckage. Something like us penthouse vacationers being salvaged by the islanders’ simple human kindness.