Perpetua's Journal from the Arena Floor

In the year 203 AD, a young noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua sat in a Carthaginian prison, nursing her infant son and writing in her journal. She was twenty-two years old, well-educated, from a prominent family. Her father begged her to recant her faith — just speak a few words honoring the emperor, and she could walk free into the North African sun, back to wealth, comfort, and her child.

Perpetua's answer has echoed through eighteen centuries: "I cannot call myself by any other name than what I am — a Christian."

What strikes readers of her diary is not bravado but calm. She wrote of visions, of Christ meeting her in prayer, of a peace that made no sense given her circumstances. She described her life as already belonging to another world, even while her body remained in chains. The prison was real. The lions in the amphitheater were real. But Perpetua had already died to the life her father wanted for her, and found herself alive in a place Roman guards could not reach.

Paul told the Colossians that their lives were "hidden with Christ in God" — tucked away in the safest vault in the universe. Perpetua understood this. Her real life was not the one Rome could take from her. It was the one hidden beyond every empire's grasp, waiting to be revealed in glory.