Paul's Face

...the Apostle Paul, that is.

Every year, Pastor John Piper writes a series of narrative poems and reads them during the Sunday services of the Advent season. He takes a familiar character from Scripture and adds a fictional element to flesh out the deeper life of what that person might have been going through.

This year, he chose the Apostle Paul and speculated over what Paul's life would be like had the "thorn in his flesh" been a deformed face. We do not know what Paul's thorn was, Scripture is not clear. Many pastors and scholars have speculated through the years that it could be blindness or a speech inpediment. Having never heard the theory of a deformed face, and having a deformed face myself, I was very intrigued by the idea that perhaps even the Apostle Paul and I could relate on some level. Whether or not he truly did or did not have a deformed face isn't the point -- the poem is an enjoyable read.

You can read the poems or listen to them via an MP3 download on your computer here:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three