Welcome to Breakpoint. Daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Of the thousands of green-clad parade goers, marchers, and partiers today, few know about St. Patrick, the man for whom today's holiday is named.

Even fewer still know of the man beyond the legend, who supposedly drove the snakes

out of Ireland, and certainly possessed an indomitable faith in Jesus Christ. Back in 2006, Chuck

Colson told St. Patrick's story, here on Breakpoint and a commentary. Here's Chuck Colson. Patrick was

born in Roman Britain to a middle-class family about 390 AD.

When Patrick was a teenager, marauding Irish raiders attacked his home.

Patrick was captured, taken to Ireland, and sold to an Irish king, who put him to work as a shepherd.

In his excellent book, how the Irish slave civilization, Thomas Cahill describes a life Patrick lived.

Cahill writes, the work of such slave shepherds was bitterly isolated, months at a time spent alone in the hills. Patrick had been raised in a Christian

home, but he didn't really believe in God. But now, hungry, lonely, frightened, and bitterly cold,

Patrick began seeking out a relationship with his Heavenly Father. As he wrote in his confessions,

I would pray constantly during the daylight hours, and the love of God surrounded me more and more.

Six years after his capture, God spoke to Patrick in a dream, saying, your hungas are rewarded. You are going home. Look, your ship is ready. What a startling command. If he obeyed, Patrick would become a fugitive slave,

constantly in danger of capture and punishment. But he did obey, and God protected him. The young

slave walked nearly 200 miles to the Irish coast, and there he boarded a waiting ship and traveled

back to Britain and his family. But as you might expect, Patrick was a different person now,

and the restless young man could not settle back into his old life. Eventually, Patrick recognized

that God was calling him to enter a monastery. In time, he was ordained as a priest, then as a bishop.

Finally, 30 years after God had led Patrick away from Ireland, he called him back to the Emerald

Isle as a missionary.

...