Transformed

Four hundred years after Jesus Christ, a teenage boy was kidnapped from his home on the island of Britain and began a life of slavery on a pagan island where human sacrifice and slavery were normal. Alone and tending sheep for months, he turned to the God he had learned about in his limited Christian education.

By faith he escaped captivity, returned home, and pursued a holy life of service. Then God called Patrick back to the land where he'd been enslaved, and the Celts were transformed as they received the Christian faith gladly.

They sensed that sacrifice was necessary. But they found out from this missionary that, instead of demanding human sacrifice, the one true God had actually sacrificed His own Son on their behalf:

"Yes, the Irish would have said, here is a story that answers our deepest needs--and answers them in a way so good that we could never even have dared dream of it. We can put away our knives and abandon our altars. These are no longer required. God . . has given us his own Son, and we are washed clean in the blood of this lamb. God does not hate us; he loves us."

In the next few centuries these Celts did something that would change the world . . (cont'd in tomorrow's post)

From "How the Irish Saved Civilization," by Thomas Cahill