Acts 28:16

The excerpt below is from a devotional by Dennis Kinlaw, sent to me by a friend. For whatever reason I feel compelled to share it.
“I love the ending to the book of Acts, which is the final story of the apostle Paul in the early church. Paul was a courageous spokesman for the gospel of Christ. He had given his life for the message, and at the end of his life he found himself under house arrest in Rome. In spite of the fact that he had to live shackled to a Roman soldier, he spent his time teaching people about Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.
“If you had lived in Rome in those days, where would you have thought the future was? The typical person would have looked to Nero’s palace for the power and the future, believing that the significant figure was the emperor ruling from his throne. The reality is that today, two thousand years later, we name our dogs Nero and our sons Paul. The world’s people are never the people of God. The one who cast a long shadow over the next two thousand years was one who was tucked away in a simple house and shackled to a Roman soldier, not the one who sat on the throne, dictating to people how they should please him.
“Do you feel that your life is being wasted? Are you in some sort of captivity? If so, take heart. I am sure that Paul felt exactly the same way. Instead of taking the gospel to Spain, he was chained to a guard in Rome, influencing only those who came to visit him. But God’s ways are not our ways, and God used Paul in the place of his captivity, with all its limitations, to change all of human history.”