Come Before Winter…

Perhaps you recognize these words from Paul’s letter we know as 2 Timothy (4:13). Many years ago – I’m thinking at least 30 – I heard the late Dr. Frank Harrington, from Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, preach on this text. He normally preached this sermon every year, on the Sunday around Labor Day, when he returned to Peachtree’s pulpit from his summer sabbatical and planning at Hilton Head Island. You can find the manuscript of the September 6, 1992 version of the sermon (the one I likely first heard) on pages 239-244 of To Comfort, To Strengthen, and to Guide: Celebrating the life, work, and witness of a Favorite Pastor. 

By that point in my life, I was already regularly taking young adults and college students to breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner, or we were having them to our house to eat with our family. So I can’t really say that this sermon “changed my life” in that it introduced a spiritual practice I had never thought about. It did, however, give a new sense of purpose – perhaps urgency – about this part of my life’s ministry.

“Come before winter . . .” The background of 2 Timothy seems to be that Paul is in jail in Rome, perhaps for a second time. When you read the opening chapter, it is hard to not think that he recognizes his time on earth is quickly drawing to an end. He has great confidence in the one in whom he has believed and is convinced that God is able to keep whatever it is that Paul gave to him until that day.

These aren’t the words of a weepy old man complaining about life, but rather, the confident words of a man who has spent decades sharing the good news about Jesus – with the kind of confidence that empowered his life in ways perhaps never duplicated by the rest of us humans. 

I wonder how many young preachers like Timothy, or Titus, or even Mark, who by now has made it back into Paul’s good graces, were influenced by Paul. (See Acts 15:36-41 to see why the phrase “Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service” in 2 Timothy 4:11 is so remarkable.) We see lots of names – of men and women; just read Romans 16 – with whom Paul has what appears to be “come before winter” kinds of relationships. 

That reality caused me to do some serious self-reflection. First, I started thinking about all the people in my own life who, were they to say “Come before winter,” I would drop everything and go. These are people who invested in me from the earliest days of my life until the present. Do I regularly thank God for these people? Then I started thinking, “Who is it that I could say, at a point of need, ‘Come before winter,’ and anticipate that they would do just that? Am I grateful that they trust me to invest in their lives?”

I don’t mean that in any sort of mercenary way. No one who has ever mentored me has made me feel like I somehow owe them. I hope no one among the many for whom I’ve bought a meal or a cup of coffee feels that he or she owes me. But I do mean that in the sense that the church is a community of faith, and true communities are constantly investing in one another. 

The Bible doesn’t tell us whether Timothy went. I can’t imagine that he didn’t go as soon as he heard word he was needed. And getting from Ephesus to Rome in those days was not as easy as buying a ticket for the overnight flight! More importantly, the question has to be, “Would you have gone?”

To put that more directly, who have you been blessed by in your faith journey that, were they to call, you would go? And, maybe even more importantly, who are you investing in as they journey through life in their relationship with Jesus, that you could call, and they would come? If you can’t name some names for those two questions, I encourage you to start thinking about the incredible example of mentoring that Paul modeled for us all to follow. 

The picture above has a story. I was meeting regularly with a young man I met as a student in Point University’s adult degree-completion program. On about our third meeting, he said “You’re and professor and I’m a student; why do you do this?” I replied, with a little sarcasm, “So that when I’m old and drooling in a nursing home bed, I can have someone who will ‘bring me a coat, and the books and the parchments.’” He looked a little confused, and I quickly and more seriously answered his question with the kinds of things you see in this devotion.

A few months later, we met just before Christmas, and he brought me this cross. He had learned that I collect crosses and was at a craft fair somewhere in North Georgia. He bought this cross and had the artist who made it paint these words on it. It has been in my office since that time. I daily get to see its reminder. 

I hope you will let it remind you of what a privilege and blessing it can be to “bring a coat, and some books and parchments” to those who have invested in you. I pray that you are already investing in others as a mentor – and if you’re not, I pray God’s Spirit would convict you of this important work. 

^{Image by joduma from Pixabay}