Some years ago, I had the marvelous opportunity of visiting Philippi.  I was troubled by the fact that not much was left of that once flourishing Roman colony.  But out by the river, where Lydia was converted, and perhaps baptized, I gained a helpful perspective.  The most winsome church of the apostolic age probably never had a building of her own.  It was the church in Lydia’s house, or in the house of some other.  If there was a particular building for the church at any time during her history, not one stone stood upon another.  No monument was there to mark the church which stood foremost as the witness of faith and love in that apostolic age.  But the river, the river continues to flow there in Philippi, rushing to its final destination in the sea.  And the message, the message that w…