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 Perpetua: One Great LoveBy Amy Rachel Peterson In A.D. 203 Perpetua, a 22-year-old wife and mother, was put to death for her faith in Jesus. After her sentencing by the Roman governor of North Africa, she kept a prison diary, the oldest extant work by a Christian woman. Choices astound me. Today I stand at a coffee counter, tapping my finger on my chin, deliberating between a venti and a grande. Some years ago, my friend Perpetua stood in front of a judge, bonds on her wrists, deliberating between worshiping the emperor or offering her throat to a sword. That was not her only question. A very small, very helpless baby was her love. He laughed when she smiled at him; he lay kicking until she picked him up; he nursed like a famished piglet every four hours; and, without her, he might die. How does one make such a choice? Could I do it? In writing of her death, Perpetua’s contemporary talks of the “exuberance of grace” the Holy Spirit pours out in the end-times to sustain us through just such moments. It’s true. But what I love about Perpetua is that she did not live a life focused on her own enjoyment and base her hope of ending well on the expectation of a special swoosh of manifested grace at the critical moment. It could be done that way, I suppose. And it might or might not work out. Stories from Perpetua’s day testify to those “Christians” who caved and folded before the same cut-and-dried choice: “Sacrifice to the emperor, or die.” After all, what is the action of lighting some wood under a dead animal, compared to feeling your own lifeblood drain out of you? What differentiated Perpetua from those who failed? She was, I would venture to say, losing more than most. Is that exuberant download of grace a lottery—some get it, some don’t? Or is it received by hearts that have consistently set themselves in its path? I count Perpetua a model for my heart, because I marvel at her own. During her life, she had plenty of chances to prefer the luxury and ease around her to the holy lifestyle of early believers. During her time in prison she had plenty of opportunity to rethink, to convince herself that she had a God-given responsibility to stay alive for the sake of her son. But over and over her choices were governed by one great love. Her unbelieving father repeatedly pled with her, “using such words as would move all of creation,” and still she turned her ear toward the real Father’s voice. Rome held out the lure of wealth and privilege, and still she decided to get baptized under the nose of her persecutors and be thrown into the dungeon for it. A girl who spent months steadfastly making choice after choice that she knew would only take her farther down the road to death must have spent her life doing the same. I usually don’t even identify the choices I have. Or, if I do, I don’t perceive their import. Will I slouch down, turn off my spirit and watch an exciting television show that plays around the edges of sins, blends relational drama with violence and calls on demonic spiritual imagery for impact? Or will I agree with God that such a seemingly inconsequential compromise will mire me in increasing dullness to Him, and choose instead to log that time toward another pursuit? Hebrews 12:14–15 follows a discussion of difficult but essential discipline: “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God” (TNIV). Perpetua lived a life of small choice after small choice, each one of them hard and God-pursuing, each one making the final choice easier. For it was really a life of small grace after small grace, each one of them divine, each one positioning her to receive the final ability to lay her life down. I could, like most of the Western Christian world, let choice after choice pass me by, unnoticed. I could live a life of comfort and ease, perhaps building a little cache of six or seven God-pursuing choices over the course of a week. But when I consider that each week probably consists of several hundred small decisions—chances to choose toward righteousness and passion, away from compromise and passivity; choices of sensitivity toward either the Spirit or my own desires—I have to honestly say that a roughly 50:1 ratio is going to overwhelm me at the end, leaving my heart without the history and strength in the Lord to make that next choice, the one that either ends my life or loses my soul. Perpetua and believers like her are looming larger and larger in my sightline, as God reveals the critical importance of righteousness, without which I may shipwreck, stumble or just live a walking death of the heart. The stakes are rising again. After centuries of relatively little persecution, the Church in America is staring at a new and stark reality—one that looks far more like Perpetua’s than we ever expected. Lulled into relevancy and compromise to the culture, we’re unaware that the spiritual forces that raged in Rome are reappearing in our own midst and that we’re all on the tight curve toward the final end of this age. We have already accumulated a critical mass of compromising choices, and our hearts are dull and almost sightless. Without righteousness they will remain that way. Without repentance we will be prisoners to wills other than God’s. Perpetua’s life may not seem fun. It may not seem easy. But every choice in it was made for the sake of a great love, and it positioned her to receive the exuberant, sufficient grace she so needed from the Lord during that last long choice. She ended well. I can end well. We all can end well, if we are willing to pursue God at every moment. Amy Rachel Peterson is a freelance writer and the author of Perpetua, a novel based on the life of the third-century martyr. More information about Perpetua is available at www.saintperpetua.com. Have comments or feedback about this article? Send your thoughts to feedback@radiantmag.com. Unless otherwise requested, your comments and name may be published. Back to Top |
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