An immigrant from Thyatira, Asia to Phillippi, Europe
In the backwaters of Thyatira, we find a young Lydia. It’s a dark and drizzly evening. Lydia and her two mates have just completed their quest:
“We’ll go out in different directions and gather the maximum number of snails that we find. The one who has the most will decide what we will do with them.”
They agree.
“We meet back on the dock when the big boat is leaving,” one of them says.
“Okay!” they say in unison.
Lydia, her brother, and her two friends gather back at the dock to see who has the most snails. Her brother wins the challenge. They take them to the closest trader and sell them for some silver as he decides.
This is how Lydia grew up: rubbing shoulders with the boys and merchants around the sea, until the day she packed her bags into a small boat, sailed, probably for one to three weeks, to a foreign land, and never returned. What might she have felt? Sad? Anxious? Happy? Excited? Nothing? One thing is for sure: it takes courage to do so. Why does she leave home anyway? Was she looking for something, or was something looking for her?
In Philippi, however, she is a renowned, wealthy businesswoman. On a muddy river bank, now as a grown woman, she reminisces about her childhood days. At the back of her mind, she can hear the laughter and the chatter, but most of all, the smell of the snails is stuck with her. She smiles to herself.
Her life in Europe is very different now. She has employees who do the “dirty” work for her, but the purple stains never truly leave her hands, because once in a while she likes to go into the factory and get her hands dirty. Regardless, she wore royal drapery.
In a land and trade dominated by men and the odds stacked against her, she was able to set up an empire and build an estate for herself and her household. Everything that the material world could offer was at her finger tips yet something was still missing. In quiet desperation, she went out of her cozy estate to a muddy river bank to seek a God she didn’t yet know.
And this is where Lydia meets Paul and Silas: At the riverbank where she and a small group of women met to seek God. During this time, Philippi didn’t have a synagogue, when Paul and his companions arrived because Jewish custom required ten Jewish men to form one (not even ten could be found).
As Paul was travelling to Asia, the Bible records that the Holy Spirit didn’t permit them to go and preach there. I find it interesting that Lydia went from Asia to Europe because seemingly, God “follows” her. What do you think?
Anyway, the gospel was able to reach Europe. The Lord opened Lydia’s heart to listen to Paul; she found the peace she was looking for, and she was baptized together with her household. God closes doors to an entire continent to reach this woman, and through her, all of Europe.
Here on, she opens her home to the missionaries; it becomes the “base of operations” and a refuge when Paul and Silas are released from prison. Lydia was the first angel investor in the Christian mission.
Note: Purple was considered royal then, today still, because of the legendary Tyrian purple sourced from certain sea snails. That said, Lydia most probably obtained hers from the madder root.
Don’t despair!
PS:
Also, do you remember the warning to the church of Thyatira?
“But I have this against you, that you tolerate this woman Jezabel who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols”