Have you ever heard of the prickly poppy? It is a plant, but I bet that was not too hard to guess. I want to help us find our way to the context of the letter Paul wrote to the Ephesian church. While doing so, I stumbled into an acronym: papaceae. First came PAPA and then came CEAE. I tried to bunch these some other ways, but this is where I landed. A little googling and Bam! A plant.
So if we can tie our concept of Ephesians to the prickly poppy, maybe we can have a context that won’t shrivel up as fast as Jonah’s little weed-shelter back in the
So, what does it mean?
- The people – PAPA – Paul. Apollos. Priscilla. Aquilla.
- Paul’s places – CEAE – Corinth->Ephesus->Antioch->Ephesus
Acts 18 and 19 paint the papaceae (“pop-ā-see-ā”), or the prickly poppy, of our context and let me brush some color into that.
Starting with Paul, we get the first “P” of our people part of the prickly poppy. Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, categorized Paul’s life as into a traveling evangelist into a set of missionary journeys. During the second of these journeys, God worked through Paul and set up the Corinthian church. In fact, the bulk of Paul’s second missionary journey happened at Corinth (The “C” in our places acronym).