Paul the Aged, Writing From a Cell

He has a pad and he has had it out three times this month, and there is nothing on it except the date, written and crossed out and written again.

Seventy. Fit enough. He walks, he reads, he does the thing on a Thursday, he is not one of these men who has stopped.

But there is a sentence that has been in him for about four years and it does not shift, and it is this: the useful part is behind me.

He would not say it out loud because it sounds self pitying and he is not a self pitying man. He means it operationally. He worked for forty three years and the work is over. He raised what he raised and they are grown and doing well and do not need him in the way they did. He was on two committees and he came off both of them properly, at the right time, with nobody having to have a conversation about it.

That is a good record and he knows it and it does not touch the sentence.

And there is the other thing, which is why the pad keeps coming out.

There is a man he has not spoken to in eleven years. It was not a scandal. It was a slow business, a thing said at a difficult time, a reply that was worse, and then eleven years of a silence that got heavier at about the four year mark and has been unmoveable since.

He has decided it is beyond mending. He decided that around year seven, and it was a relief, and it has not felt like a relief for a while.

The pad is a good pad. He got it out again on Tuesday and wrote the date and looked at it for eleven minutes and put it back in the drawer.

There is a letter in the New Testament that is one page long, and it is the most personal thing Paul ever wrote, and he tells you in the ninth verse exactly what he was when he wrote it.

Being such a one as Paul the aged

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally promises. Write it and he will write back. God will restore that friendship. I am not going to say either. Nobody talking to a man of seventy about God has been authorized to promise a reply, and a promised reconciliation that does not come would close the drawer for good.

Philemon is one page. It is about a runaway slave called Onesimus and it is a request from Paul to a man called Philemon, and it is the warmest and most personal thing in the New Testament.

And in the middle of the appeal Paul says this about himself: Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such a one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ (Philemon 1:9).

Paul the aged. He names it. He is old and he says so, in writing, in the middle of asking for something.

And a prisoner. He is in a cell as he writes it. He has no position, no freedom of movement, no platform, and no capacity to do anything about the situation he is writing into except write.

You have not run out of the only thing that letter required. That is not me overreading Philemon; Philemon 1:9 has an old man in chains describing himself accurately and then making the ask anyway, and the Holy Spirit who preserved that letter kept both facts in the sentence.

And notice what the letter does. It is not a general encouragement. It goes into one specific relationship, between two named men, about one particular difficulty, and it asks for something costly and specific. That is what an old man in a cell did with an afternoon.

Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such a one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.Philemon 1:9

The sentence and the drawer

Now the connection he has not made, and it is the whole of this.

The sentence, the useful part is behind me, and the pad going back in the drawer are not two separate facts about a man's week. The first one is what makes the second one possible.

A man who believes his useful part is over does not write the letter, because writing it would be a claim that something might still come of what he does, and that claim contradicts the sentence he has been living in for four years.

So the pad comes out and goes back, and the sentence stays intact, and the silence goes into its twelfth year.

You have never been retired from the one thing that letter was made of. 1 Corinthians 13:8 says charity never faileth, and never faileth is a claim about duration made in a chapter about the one thing that outlasts everything else; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) has not withdrawn a man's capacity to love somebody at seventy.

This is yours right now, with a pad and a date on it: the whole of what Paul had in that cell. Philemon 1:9 shows the entire apparatus of that letter, which was an old man, a difficult relationship, and a willingness to ask; the Spirit who preserved it did not add anything else to the list.

What the letter is not

Let me be exact about what is being suggested, because a false promise here would be cruel.

Writing that letter will not necessarily mend anything. The other man may not reply. He may reply badly. Eleven years is a long time and the thing that was said at a difficult time was said, and nothing on this page can undo it.

Paul, for what it is worth, did not know either. He asks and he does not command, and he says so in the verse before: he could be bold in Christ to enjoin him, and he chooses not to (Philemon 1:8).

So this is not a promise about an outcome. It is about whether the useful part is behind you, and there is a man in Scripture who answered that question from a cell at an age nobody would have argued with.

You were never the one who had to guarantee the reply. Romans 12:18 says if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men, and the as much as lies in you is exactly and only your half; the Holy Spirit who carried that into the letter put the limit in on purpose.

Fruit is not output, and a pad with a date on it is where the difference is sharp. Output would be a reconciliation, an answer, a friendship resumed, and none of that is his to produce. Fruit is what grows on a man who stays attached, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. In the ten minutes before the light goes, tell Him one true thing about the eleven years with nothing asked for and no outcome wanted. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody grades that.