Boasting Like a Fool

But Paul does something in this passage that stops you cold. When he finally lists his own credentials, he does not land on his accomplishments. He lands on his suffering. Beatings, shipwrecks, sleepless nights, a day adrift at sea, the daily weight of anxiety for the churches. And then, at the very end, almost as a throwaway, he tells the story of escaping Damascus in a basket lowered through a window. He is bragging about running away. He is bragging about being let down through a hole in a wall like a sack of grain.