A Blessing from the Prisoner
May God bless and keep you always
May your trust always be true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build ladders in the heavens
And climb on every rungMay you stay forever young
May you know life in its beauty
May you write words that are true
May you always sense yourself in Christ
And see the light surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever youngMay your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of fortune shift
May your hearts always be joyful
May your songs always be sung
And may you stay forever youngMay you always live the peace of Christ
May this blessing keep you whole
May your hearts always be open
Angels speaking to your souls
May you always be forgiving
As you see your races run
And may you stay forever youngReflection
Of course, the first thing I need to do is apologize to Bob Dylan. I have changed some of his words to Forever Young and added a new verse, but the result is still mostly his song. Listeners have imagined that Forever Young was originally written as a blessing for Dylan’s infant son. However, I have re-imagined it as the rest of the story from Second Timothy. As I took notes on Second Timothy, I kept coming up with lines a lot like those in Forever Young. I hope you can see this poem as Paul’s blessing for his spiritual children. This also is new for me because I’ve imagined Paul as more ready to confront than to comfort with a personality that makes enemies easier than it makes friends. In the last part of this letter not only are Paul and Timothy present, but also lurking at the edges are Luke and Mark. They are all Paul’s friends. We have the writers of over half of the New Testament present here.
Paul, Biblical scholars tell us, probably dictated most or all of his letters to scribes. As I thought about the contents of 2 Tim 4, I thought that perhaps Luke might have been the scribe for Second Timothy. He was after all visiting Paul in his Roman prison. As Paul stayed in prison beginning to realize that he was possibly not getting out of this alive, I imagined that there might have been a final meeting with Luke that also included Timothy and Mark and the cloak. So I imagine that A Blessing from the Prisoner is not only a blessing from Paul for his 3 friends but also a kind of commissioning of the gospels. I hope you will read again A Blessing from the Prisoner with this story in mind.