Paul and Barn­abas at Lystra, Nico­laes Berchem (1650)

This is a short story I wrote about one of my favorite per­sons in the New Tes­ta­ment, Barn­abas. It is writ­ten from the per­spec­tive of John Mark, the writer of one of the four gospels.

Yes­ter­day my good friend, our good friend, was taken away from us. Through a let­ter, I’ve learned that out­side of Salamis, cruel men took Barn­abas and stoned him. The let­ter told much of what had hap­pened. Barn­abas had been preach­ing in that city about the gospel of Jesus Christ and a group of men from the syn­a­gogue in that town accused him of blas­phemy. With­out even a trial, they stormed into his the home where he was stay­ing before day­break, pulled him out of bed, not even giv­ing him a chance to put his proper gar­ments on and set him before the coun­cil in Salamis. Rem­i­nis­cent of our Saviour’s trial, they would barely let him get a word out and when he tried, they would strike him. Not much else is known after this inci­dent of the trial. They impris­oned him for two days, and then they must have secretly took him out­side the city gates and mur­dered him there. Three days hence, a trav­eler found his body and brought him back to the city. This man had found him with his face nearly unrec­og­niz­able. The only rea­son they were able to iden­tify his body, was because lying next to him was the writ­ings of Matthew that he had re-written with his own hand. There in Salamis, that small fel­low­ship gave him a proper bur­ial. My heart is bro­ken because my friend is gone.

As I sit here and write, I remem­ber so many good things he did for so many. Barn­abas was unlike most men. He was gen­er­ous and had a great amount of wealth but he shared equally with all. I do not know much about where he came from—I know that he was born into a wealthy fam­ily and would often sell a piece of prop­erty or offer a gen­er­ous gift to some­one who was in need. He was a per­son whose word was always true; when he said he would do some­thing for you he would do it whether that meant shar­ing the Scrip­tures with you or even one time, I remem­ber, one of the women in our fel­low­ship had been sick for many days, and he went and tended to her chil­dren and her chores for those days.

Barn­abas loved chil­dren. He was a giant of a man and gen­tle and you would often find chil­dren hang­ing off his big back as he gave them rides as if he was a horse. He loved to be around chil­dren, some­times even more then with oth­ers. When we had a gath­er­ing, and after the Lord’s sup­per had been shared, we would often not be able to find him. After look­ing for a while, he would be out­side and we would find him play­ing some game with a hand­ful of children.

Of course, I will never for­get him, because in many ways he saved my own life. I had joined Paul and Barn­abas on a mis­sion­ary trip– really I was too young, but I thought I knew every­thing and that I was invin­ci­ble. We entered the town of Perga and even after a day we began to be ridiculed because of our mes­sage about Jesus. I grew very timid. To be frank, I was ter­ri­fied. What would they do to us? Both of them had told me sto­ries of oth­ers who shared the gospel of beat­ings or being thrown into jail, but I guess I just didn’t really believe that that had hap­pened. Now, when a large group of peo­ple had sur­rounded us and were threat­en­ing our lives, my knees grew weak and I vom­ited all over myself. That seemed to calm the crowd down, but for me, it opened my eyes and I grew cow­ardly. I wanted to go back home—I didn’t want to con­tinue and so I aban­doned them both.

It was over six months later that I saw both of them back in Jerusalem. By this time I had felt awful for what I had done. I had learned of their hard work and the dan­gers that they had faced. I carry tremen­dous guilt because really I had not deserted them as much as I had for­saken my Sav­ior. I resolved I would never do such a thing as that again. It was a cou­ple months later and Barn­abas and Paul had decided to ven­ture again to Cyprus. I wanted so much to show both of them that I could be trusted and so I went to Anti­och and asked if I could join them. Paul imme­di­ately barked at me that he would never let me go with him again. He reit­er­ated over and over that I had failed them both in my cow­ardice. I not only jeop­ar­dized my own life, but theirs as well. Paul was furi­ous with me for even bring­ing it up. Barn­abas was try­ing to calm him down with his big but quiet voice, but Paul’s strong words con­tin­ued and he main­tained that he would never let me join him again.

Barn­abas stared at me. He focused on my face and we locked eyes. Admit­tingly, it was as if I was in Perga all over again and I was ter­ri­fied. Why was he star­ing at me? As he looked at me, his eyes glis­tened and he turned to Paul and spoke words that I will never for­get and ones that haunt me still. “Paul, per­haps you have given up on John Mark. I will not. You take Silas and go to Tar­sus. John Mark and I will jour­ney back to Cyprus.” That was it; that was all he said. But his words were solid and strong. I had never heard him speak with such force­ful­ness and with such con­vic­tion. Paul did not say a word, he just nod­ded twice and as he left the room he placed his right hand on Barn­abas’ shoul­der. His eyes too began to moisten because he knew that he would never see his friend again.

As we left, we did not speak for a good hour. I knew I needed to give Barn­abas some room to think. Now that I much older, I have learned that even though it is good to make sac­ri­fices, it does not take away the sharp­ness of the pain. I had cost Barn­abas his friend and in that silence I seemed to hear him say that it was okay, not maybe good, but okay. Barn­abas was a good man, easy to be with even when you were dif­fi­cult. Through him, for the first time I gen­uinely was learn­ing for­give­ness. Not until now do I under­stand what that was. I did not deserve a sec­ond chance, but for­give­ness was at hand, and I accepted it. Because of that, I found the courage to sail to Cyprus the fol­low­ing day.