Bring the Books, Please.

 Greetings t o you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Second Timothy 4:9:-13 says, “ Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me:  For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia.  Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.  And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus.  The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments”

     We often hear the word, “downsizing . “It usually refers to a company that is laying off employees in order to stay in business, but the term can also apply even to people.  Most of my life has been just the opposite.  I was getting more and more stuff until we came to our last house.  I had a lawn edger, two lawn mowers, saws, blowers, hedge trimmers, pruning saws, tools I didn’t know how to work and a lot of electronic “stuff.”  Well, all of a sudden, we were confronted with downsizing.  We now have one room, a bathroom and two closets .  we also have our two beds, one recliner a chest of drawers and two shelves and a stand for the microwave and coffee machine.  We have a lot of little stuff crammed into any space that we could find.

     The Apostle Paul was probably a well to do person due to his status before he was saved.  He had a lot of power and went  about bringing in those who were a part of “The Way.”   All of a sudden, things changed for him on the road t o Damascus.  The Scriptures remind us of the sufferings that took place in his life but all of his past life and things didn’t make any difference anymore.    The above passage is a little sad in some ways as it lists the people t hat had been a part of the ministry and then left.  It says that only Luke was left with him.  The evengelistic team seems to have been “downsized” quite a lot.  It is also interesting to note that he wanted to have his cloak, probably because  he needed it where he was .  He also wanted his parchments and his books.  I notice the residents here at our assisted living facility who were believers before they came here and they all bring their Bibles.  Lawn mowers, cars, boats, furniture may all be gone, but that which is important remains and usually it is their own Bible.  I probably had more than several hundred books, that  I lugged around from ministry to ministry and even to Spain in ten mail bags, a total of thirty boxes of books.  Now, I have a small stack of the most important books , Bible, Greek New Testament, Hans parsing guide and a spanish translation of the Bible.  The accumulation of things in our lives gets less important as we downsize in our later years. Praise God today for those things that you have t hat  are the most important things in your life right  now.