Week 48 Timothy
Paul to Timothy: as you know, all the Christians who came here from the province of Asia have deserted me; even Phygelus & Hermogenes are gone.
I wonder where Here is but a couple of verses later Paul mentions Rome. And he’d already mentioned prison. So he was in prison in Rome.
I check my atlas looking for Asia. It looks like the big western chunk of modern-day Turkey. Those people travelled a far piece to support Paul in Rome. And then for some reason deserted him.
It’s hard to know exactly why they all bailed-out on Paul. I check the names Phygelus & Hermogenes in a word book. They’re only mentioned this one time in the whole bible. Deserters.
Near the end of the letter Paul told Timothy again: no one was with me. Everyone had abandoned me… But then when he said that I guess Paul caught himself; remembered; back-tracked; corrected himself: but the Lord stood with me.
I’ve only met her a couple of times a long time ago but I know an old woman from Cambodia. This year she got cancer. She had to leave the country…go to a hospital in Thailand for treatments. Away from home. No family. No friends. Pretty much – but not completely – alone. One of her notes from the cancer ward said: Jesus is here with me.
So reading Paul today I thought about her.
Note: quotes from 2 Timothy 1:15, 16, 4:10, 16-17 (NLT)