That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.
2 Timothy 1:12 (NIV)
He Knows Who Is Holding It
The backpack goes out at the end of the driveway on Wednesday afternoon, packed the night before. Reading folder, gym shoes, the inhaler in the side pocket where it’s lived since second grade. Her son gets in the car, tells his father a joke she can’t hear, and both of them in the front seat are laughing when it pulls off. She stands there a second longer than she needs to.
Everyone in the province of Asia has left him by the time this letter goes out, and two of them are named in it. Out of that comes the sentence: he is suffering as he is, this is no cause for shame, and he knows whom he has believed and is convinced that God can guard what he entrusted to him until that day.
He gave something to God to keep, and he’s convinced God can guard it. He knows whom he has believed, and he says so from a room everyone else has walked out of.
Then he turns to Timothy and gives him two jobs: keep the pattern of sound teaching, and guard what was entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. Paul put one thing in God’s keeping and told Timothy to guard another. Both of those are true at once.
So she gives up most of the weekend on Wednesday. What time he goes to bed over there, whether the folder gets opened, what gets said about her at that table. She has the drive down the driveway, and what he’s already learned from watching her, and neither of those is small.
Not every driveway has a man at the end of it who can be trusted. He knows the one he entrusted it to. Nothing in the letter says anybody has to trust whoever is standing there.
Until that day, Paul says. Hers is Sunday around six, when the car comes back up the street and the boy gets out with the backpack half unzipped and news he wants to tell her before he reaches the door.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, I’m ashamed of a thing I didn’t choose. My life has a shape now that I explain to people, and I’m worn out from the explaining. I’ve been told this is no cause for shame. I am a long way from that. I know who you are, and that has not moved.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
