It may be hard to identify with the circumstances surrounding Paul’s experience in today's reading, but I think it would be very valuable for you to try. After all, we’re all navigating a life course through the hostile territory of a fallen world without knowing exactly what will come next. Of course that’s one of the most compelling reasons to not only quote Proverbs 3:5-6 but to live it.
(I've attached a photo of our daughter Katherine's girls, Nita and Beka, who joined me in my WOG (walk/jog) with the dogs a couple weeks ago.)
I don’t know how many companions traveled with Paul to Rome. We can be sure Luke went along. I’m sure Paul deeply appreciated Luke’s friendship and loyalty. We know that Paul and Luke had just passed through a long spell without any good fellowship with other believers. Paul certainly did not keep the Gospel message quiet on this trip to Rome even as a prisoner. But there is no mention of any stirring evangelistic success, even though many were healed of all kinds of infirmities on Malta. If this was so, that fact could have been a bit disheartening for Paul. It could have lent to a kind of dry spell in his faith walk. Having had such an exciting vision of world evangelism, and having received such a dramatic call from God to be an ambassador for Christ, and having had such powerful results in his former ministry, he may have been feeling a little blue, wondering if his usefulness and maybe even the power of the Gospel were kind of waning. He was certainly not surrounded with a lot of observable evidence of effectiveness to help him resist such thoughts. The fact is that both Biblical and church histories reveal evidence that even great men of faith encounter valleys of discouragement.
But when Paul met the believers near Rome, men whose lives God had revolutionized by the Gospel, perhaps as a result of Paul’s former missionary ministries, who were all excited to see Paul, all expecting his arrival with great anticipation, it seems that his emotional dry spell came to an end. It says that when they arrived at Puteoli, “we found some brothers who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome. The brothers there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these men Paul thanked God and was encouraged” (Acts 28:14-15).
As standard equipment for your own Christian sojourn, may I recommend that you carry with you a good clear copy (preferably memorized) of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:58? “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (KJV). It’s a concept that will help to greatly minimize “down” time. If you will establish such perspective boundaries for your faith and behavior, you can make it through anything…like loneliness, shipwreck, the appearance of ineffectiveness, and spiritual dry spells, without wandering off course.
While you’re at it, carry this copy along too: “If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand” (Ps. 37:23-24).