Skip to main content

Onesiphorus, Phygelus, and Herogene


You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me.  May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus. (2 Timothy 1:15-18)
          This morning, I came across a social media question about why people don’t help 99% of the time. Part of my answer to the questioner was that we tend to want our knights in shining armor to ride in, do all the work, and leave until we want help again. The helper doesn’t really matter so much, because we’re using them to meet a need (or a want.) Another reason I told him was that people aren’t mind-readers. We must communicate our need for help to them.
          This is part of one of the lessons I’m learning in Grace Cottage. When Dad was alive, he fixed things, or he told me to call someone to fix things, or we went without them. Now, I have to look to others. I have to ask and that’s hard. It’s not that I think I’m so great and shouldn’t need help. It’s that I want to be invisible, and needing help interferes with that. I’m concerned that my visibility and my neediness will make people resent me.
          The idea that people don’t help 99% of the time, or that friends disappear when trouble comes isn’t new, and there is truth to it. In today’s passage, Paul told Timothy that everyone had deserted him. In one of my stories, Zheann observes that the hex that makes Rys invisible is an accusation against a Rys. Chances are good that if you find yourself in need, the faces in the crowd won’t be those of helpers, but of those who relish your pain.
          Those who claimed to be Paul’s friends to the end, just like the disciples who vowed they would follow Jesus to the death all ran away when trouble reared its ugly head. But he was not left completely alone. Onesiphorus stuck to him like glue. Most of your friends will not be there when you need them, but a few will, or a few will return like the disciples did.
          Do you think you know who your Onesiphorus is, and who your Phygeluses and Herogeneses are? They may not be the same people today that they were yesterday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more