I wrote about St Patrick last year, but I didn’t come close to capturing what my friend Bill Mowry did in his recent post How Will You Celebrate St Patrick’s Day? Here are some snippets, but I recommend you read it in its entirety.

St. Patrick’s day is a time to celebrate imagination and evangelism. Did I catch your attention? Here’s the backstory on how this former slave saved civilization.

At the age of sixteen (approximately 406 C.E.), Patrick was kidnapped from his home in Britain and forced into slavery in Ireland. During this time of harsh deprivation, Patrick came to the Savior. After being enslaved seven years, he escaped and returned home. At the ripe age of forty-eight, Patrick responded to God’s call and returned to Ireland as a missionary to convert his former captors. Instead of revenge or retribution, he came with a message of forgiveness.

…Patrick’s mission was inspired by a night-time vision where the Irish people cried out in a dream, “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk with us.” With an entourage of priests, seminarians, and others, he embarked for Ireland in 432 C.E.

Let me pause. God still speaks, just as he did when he called Paul to Greece (see Acts 16.6 – 10). Bill’s narrative continues:

Patrick married himself to the language, customs, and imagination of the Irish people. The Irish excelled in expressing themselves in symbols, metaphors, and image, both visual and poetic. Their imagination created wonderful geometric designs, filigree work, and enameling.

Instead of urging his converts to renounce those qualities, Patrick embedded the Irish imagination into the gospel and into the life of the Celtic church.

… Patrick intentionally sprinkled the flavor of the poet and the storyteller into the gospel movement, touching the Irish soul through the familiar channels of storytelling, poetry, music, drama, and dance.

… Patrick wasn’t afraid of what he discovered in the culture. Cahill observes that “Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination — making it more humane and more novel while keeping it Irish.”

An example of the transformed imagination is the Celtic cross. In this cross, we see the great O, the circle of the globe held in tension by the two arms of the cross, creation and redemption. Together, they celebrate the greatness and nearness of God. One author calls the Celtic cross “a sermon in stone.” 

God uses all kinds of people, often if they’re willing to sacrifice their own comfort and safety for the sake of others. Bill writes:

In his lifetime, Patrick planted seven hundred churches and baptized thousands of people. His gospel wed salvation and social justice together. Slavery and human sacrifice became unthinkable in Ireland. New laws were influenced by gospel norms.

…When you put on a touch of green on St. Patrick’s Day, thank God for this great leader. God wedded his zeal for the gospel to the Irish imagination, planting a gospel movement in a pagan culture. Patrick showed us how imagination can be a powerful ally in the Great Commission. – My Creative Friend Bill Mowry, How Will You Celebrate St Patrick’s Day?

The Apostle Paul’s approach was similar:

Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. (1 Corinthians 9.19 – 22, MSG)