Eighty-Six Years of Refuge

When Roman authorities dragged the elderly bishop Polycarp before the proconsul in Smyrna around 155 AD, they offered him a simple bargain: curse Christ and walk free. Polycarp, now in his eighties, had been a disciple of the Apostle John himself. He had learned to pray at John's knee as a young boy, had watched his mentor's weathered hands break bread, had absorbed a faith that ran marrow-deep.…