2 Timothy 1:4

Paul was one of the most influential leaders of the early Christian movement, and Timothy was a young pastor he had mentored for years — Paul called him his "true son in the faith." The letter known as 2 Timothy is widely believed to be the last letter Paul ever wrote, composed while he was imprisoned in Rome and awaiting execution. In this one verse, Paul tells Timothy that he remembers his tears — almost certainly from a painful goodbye at their last parting — and that he longs to see him again, because being reunited with Timothy would fill Paul with joy. Written by a man facing death, it is one of the most tender and human lines in the entire New Testament.

Lord, thank you for making us in such a way that we need each other — that missing someone is not a weakness but a sign of love well placed. Bring to mind the people I've been meaning to reach out to and haven't. Give me the courage to say the tender thing before the moment passes. Amen.

A man awaiting execution is thinking about his friend's tears. Not his theological legacy, not the churches planted across three continents, not the letters that would shape Christianity for two thousand years — his friend's face, wet with grief, at their last goodbye. Paul, who wrote some of the most dazzling spiritual writing in human history, sits in a Roman prison cell and composes six words that could have come from anyone: I miss you. I want to see you. You would make me happy. We sometimes imagine that deep faith produces people who are somehow above longing — serene, self-sufficient, needing very little. Paul obliterates that idea in a single sentence. He is lonely. He is aching. And he names it without apology or spiritual qualification. There is something both freeing and quietly challenging in that. Freeing, because you do not have to perform self-sufficiency as a form of faith. Challenging, because Paul's tenderness required him to actually tell Timothy what he felt — to say it plainly, in writing, where it could not be unsaid. Who in your life right now is sitting in their own kind of prison — grief, isolation, a long hard season — who needs to know that you are thinking of them, that seeing them would genuinely bring you joy? Don't file that thought away. Write the letter.