“ A colleague like Barnabas could comfort him (Paul) in illness and keep him from overstrain when fit. ”
Disgust at idols strengthened his love for idolaters, and the man who once held Gentile neighbors at a distance now listened to their problems, fears, and temptations.
~ John Charles Pollock
New converts displayed a most un-Roman concern for the sick man.
His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.
In his late forties, an age when men settle to comforts and seek a firm base, Paul began his roughest travels.