As you know, I love to be outdoors and to travel. I can therefore only imagine how galling an active person like Paul must have found his imprisonment in Rome as he wrote the book of Philippians. His life was one mission trip after another as he restlessly moved from one strategic city to the next. What must it have been like for him to be cooped up in prison? We know he was longing to revisit the churches he'd founded and from which he now was forcibly separated. Then there was his dream of going further west from Rome to Gaul and even Spain.
He was no doubt longing to be active again in his evangelistic and church planting ministry. Some have pictured him like a horse pawing the ground or a pinioned eagle futility flapping his wings to be able to soar again or even a lion pacing relentlessly in his cage.
But this was not Paul, who actually welcomed his imprisonment. However much frustration it had brought him, it had turned out well for the gospel of Christ. The gospel of Christ was more important to him than his own liberty. "Paul was glad to be silenced if thereby others were challenged to speak. Paul was glad to have lost his freedom if thereby the gospel gained a greater freedom" (John Stott). What an example. I can only imagine what it would have been like to live like this man, as I fall very short. I fear I have too many self-centered ambitions rather than Christ-centered ambitions.
Grant me, Father, the same ambition the apostle Paul had -- to glorify and magnify Christ whether by life or by death.