It seems a bit of a waste," he said.

I nodded. I could see his point. We were talking over coffee in the university laboratory where he and I had been working as colleagues for the best part of two years. Somehow our conversation had got round to what we were going to do next. He had shown me a letter he had just received, offering him a job in a scientific instrument company. The salary mentioned had so many zeroes on the end, I thought at first it was expressed in Italian lire rather than American dollars! Then he asked me about my plans.

"Well," I said, "I am thinking seriously about going into the Christian ministry."

His eyes blinked. His coffee-cup froze in mid-air. For some moments he said nothing at all. Then he gulped slightly.

"It seems a bit of a waste," he said.

I nodded. I could indeed see his point. For seven years I had been studying science, and in those pre-recession days well-qualified scientists were in demand. What is more, I enjoyed science; I was quite good at it. My parents had made considerable Sacrifices to launch me on an academic career which they were certain would end nowhere short of a Nobel prize. To think of changing direction at this late stage! Well, it seemed lunacy! To throw away so much hard-won specialist knowledge. A bit of a waste? Well, frankly, that was an understatement.

What on earth was I doing even considering such a reckless move? "Why be a preacher, Roy?" I asked myself.

During the years since that conversation, that question has sometimes come back to haunt me. And when it does I always read this passage once again, as I read it that same evening, after my colleague had gone home.

If anybody had reason to regret his decision to be a preacher, Paul did. He had a promising academic career in front of him, too: lecturer in Old Testament at the university of Jerusalem. If he had gone on as he was going, he would have inherited Gamaliel's professorial chair for sure when the old boy died. Yet what did he do? He threw it all away in order to be a Christian missionary. His friends must have told him, "It seems like a bit of a waste, Paul."

And what had his missionary work earned him? He tells us in 2 Corinthians 4 and again in chapter 6: worry, hardships, beatings, imprisonments, sleepless nights, poverty, sickness -- and that is only half the list. It would not have been so bad if the churches he served had expressed some gratitude for all the sacrifice he had made, but half the time, they were a worse burden to him than anything else.

Take Corinth for instance, a city where he had endured relentless hostility and scorn from his fellow countrymen the Jews for over eighteen months while he had stayed there and founded that first Christian congregation. It could only have been a few years at the most since he had left them, yet already trouble was brewing. Now, distracted by the anxiety of it all, he cannot concentrate on the evangelistic program he has scheduled in Asia; he is uncharacteristically restless and disturbed (2 Cor. 2:13).