Paul went on also to Derbe and to Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek.
He was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium.
Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. - Acts 16.1-3
In David Foster Wallace's massive and bewildering novel Infinite Jest, one character - a failed tennis prodigy, failed actor, and accomplished drunk - tells his son, "I'm afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN."
As fears go, that's a pretty good one.
New Year's Day falls on a Sunday this year, a more or less random result of the Julian calendar imposed by Caesar a half-century or so before the birth of Christ. The Roman emperor chose it as the feast day of Janus, a two-faced god whose habit of looking backward and forward at the same time seemed to lend itself to the idea of taking stock and making plans. It has no biblical significance; still, it does provide us with an opportunity to recognize some place of ending one lap and beginning another as we loop the unceasing cycle of time.
It's an invitation, in other words, to ponder what our tombstone might read while we still have time to re-write it.
When he and Paul first met, Timothy was a promising young man. His potential got Paul's attention, then it immediately got Paul's direction. Timothy had to do some things: accompany Paul, and submit to a painful ritual which the Apostle himself knew to be optional. The best way to avoid unused promise later, Paul seems to think, was to act on it in the present.
The best way not to die a promising old man is to do something with that promise while we are young. And even if we are no longer young, we are at least as young as we're likely to get.
It's worth noting that Timothy acted on his promise by doing something with his body: He had to move it from one place to another (accompany Paul), and to have a little less of it to move (circumcision). During the civil rights movement in the '50's and '60's, young black activists had a question designed to gauge one's commitment to the cause: "Where is your body?" Was it sitting at a segregated lunch counter? Riding a restricted bus? Sitting in a jail cell? Doctrinal or intellectual assent made a promise, but only action kept that promise.
New Year's Day is a good day to ask, "Where is my body?" If we don't want our personal epitaph for 2017 to read, "Here lies a promising Christian, one year older," perhaps we should begin by pondering the places God calls our bodies to go and the sacrifices God calls our bodies to make right here and now.
Where was my body on January 1? Was it in bed, recovering from a night's revels? In the living room, watching an athletic contest? Or was it, my body, found among the assembled bodies of fellow-believers? In other words, did my body begin the year with the Body of Christ? Where was my body throughout the year? Was it sitting at ease among bodies that looked like mine? Or was it, my body, found among very different bodies in terms of color, culture, clothing? Was it, perhaps, my body, found among hungry, unclothed, ill, or imprisoned bodies, which Jesus said are His body?
What will the epitaph read for my personal 2017? It all depends what I carve on it in the three hundred and sixty-five days between now and then.
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