kidnapped – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

Irish pirates had kidnapped Patrick as his family was enjoying a holiday at the sea. He was just days away from celebrating his sixteenth birthday.*

Appealing in prayer to heaven during his six years in captivity laboring as a slave, Patrick met the Lord and readily yielded up his life. A dream alerting him that he would be rescued was followed by another dream, notifying him that a ship awaited him. The ship would bring him back to his homeland. Patrick set out toward the port and soon found himself aboard the vessel.

Patrick’s time back in Britain eventually drew to a close as a result of yet another dream. This dream featured a voice with clear Irish accent calling out,

“We beg you, come back and walk once more among us.”

His appeal to church leaders about returning to Ireland as a bearer of Christ’s love was met with sharp resistance. Everyone feared the barbaric Druids who ruled much of the island would come after Patrick and kill him. Responding to his heart’s prevailing conviction he set out on his own, and the saga of an island nation’s spiritual transformation was born.

Patrick’s years of fruitfulness – proclaiming Christ in his adopted Ireland – were nevertheless marked with intense opposition time and again. At least one attempt was made at finishing him off with poison. He writes,

“As every day arrives, I expect either sudden death or deception, or being taken back as a slave or some such other misfortune. But I fear none of these, since I look to the promise of heaven and have flung myself into the hands of the all-powerful God, who rules as Lord everywhere.”

So, Saint Patrick’s account, penned in his own Confessions, brings to us the gift of – as Paul Harvey would have said – the rest of the story.

The shock was mildly traumatic for a seven-year-old on that March morning. A gaggle of elementary children, rushing toward a handful of their unsuspecting classmates – myself included.

Eyes flashed in mischievous glee, small hands stretching our direction. Too late we discovered our necks and arms were targets. The chubby fingers of our young assailants had been poised to strike any person in their line of vision – those whose garments did not display the magic color green.

The inevitable pinch followed. “Ouch!”

That morning at Wilson Grade School I got rudely introduced to a curiously labeled holiday – Saint Patrick’s.

To the surprise of many (leprechaun folklore and emerald-tinted beer aside), the ancient account of the authentic Saint Pat of history yields elements of intrigue. Patrick’s story rallies the imagination, stirs emotions, and inspires.

Saint Patrick, oddly enough, was not himself Irish.

The 16-year-old of fourth-century Britain was kidnapped and whisked off to Ireland by a band of marauding invaders. Sold into slavery he labored for years as a herdsman. In prayer he turned to Christ. The spiritual discipline of prayer would come to mark the pilgrim forever.

The pages of Patrick’s autobiography, Confessions, disclose a surprising turn of events lying ahead for this shepherd-boy slave. A dream came to him one night. In the dream, a voice spoke to him,

“Soon you will be returning to your own country”. What could this mean?

Tag: kidnapped

An Island Revisited

Slave Boy