Today’s Scripture Reading (March 27, 2018): 2 Timothy 4
The great Sherlock Holmes, or Arthur Conan Doyle,
believed that “To a great mind, nothing is little.” If we are observant, there
are always little cues that tell us a lot. But we have to be willing to look and listen.
There is so much that we do not know about Paul’s
final days. Did he make it to Spain after he was
released from his prison episode in Rome is a question that has been asked without a satisfactory answer for centuries. But in this simple comment, Paul
gives us some details on how his last days were
spent.
The first thing we should note is that Paul likely
had advance knowledge of his final arrest (we do not know if Paul realized that
this would be his final arrest.) We know that the prophet Agabus warned Paul of
his upcoming arrest in Jerusalem (Acts 21) and so it is possible that something
similar might have happened just before this arrest. It was common practice for
soldiers to arrest someone and take any property possessed by the prisoner as
their own. So Paul’s comment here seems to indicate that Paul was warned, of
his upcoming arrest, at Troas and was able to give some of his more prized
possessions to a friend before they were claimed
by the soldiers. Some argue that Paul was
likely arrested at Troas, but that doesn’t necessarily follow. He might
have been arrested at Troas, but the
actual arrest may have happened later. All we know is that Paul was warned of
his upcoming arrest and was able to give some of his possessions to a friend
named Carpus before his arrest.
Second, while it seemed that Paul
understood that his life was coming to an end (I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the
time for my departure is near. I
have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. –
2 Timothy 4:6-7), he remained a student to the very end. He wanted the books he had left at Troas brought to him, and
especially his parchments, which would have been Paul’s copy of the Tanakh, or
the Old Testament. Just because his life was coming to an end did not stop the
Apostle’s thirst for knowledge. Even late in his life, he had more that he wanted to know about his God. For Paul,
the need to learn more never ended.
Our need to learn should never end either. There should
never be a point in our lives when we have learned enough about our God. We
need to give in to our thirst to learn more.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Peter 1
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