"I'M PRAYING FOR YOU"

Haitian hospitals and Haitian jails have this in common: Meal service and other basic necessities are not provided by the staff. 

Thankfully, I never had reason to spend a single night in either one, but I have this on good authority. In a Haitian hospital, the hospital’s role is to provide a roof overhead, a bed, and a doctor. I knew of a man whose wife was having contractions and he had to leave the hospital to shop for sterile water, latex gloves, and other supplies to take back to her doctor. 

If you needed to spend several days in a hospital in Haiti, your family and friends were responsible for bathing you and feeding you. Nobody else was going to do those things for you. There was no hospital cafeteria and no cleaning crew. The most disgusting bathroom I have ever seen was in a Haitian hospital. (I will spare you the details.)

I never saw one firsthand, but I am told Haitian jails, likewise, provide only the basics: a place, a lock, and some guards to keep everyone in line. Nothing else. If you are a prisoner, you better have someone on the outside who cares enough to visit you and bring you some rice and beans on a regular basis. 

I had never given it much thought, but the prisons of biblical times had to be similar arrangements. Remember Jesus’ parable about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25? It’s a picture of Judgment Day and Jesus the King says to the gathered sheep, “I was hungry and you fed me; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and in prison and you visited me.” And the sheep answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? Or naked and clothe you? Or sick or in prison and come to visit you?” And the King replies, “Whenever you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.”

I doubt Jesus' original audience would have envisioned that visitation of the sick or imprisoned as stopping by to say hello and have a pleasant chat. He was obviously talking about ongoing care. Tending the body and spirit of a hurting, broken, and lonely person.

I bring this up because I have been studying Paul’s letter to the Philippians. 

It’s a letter written from a prison cell. Scholars debate what city Paul was in at the time he wrote the letter. (Paul found himself in a lot of different prisons!) Some think he wrote the Philippians from Rome, some from Caesarea. There is good reason to locate it at Ephesus though.

If he was in prison in Ephesus, Paul was writing to a church 250 miles away as the crow flies. (If Rome, 800 miles. If Caesarea, 1,400 miles.) 

I mention the distance because the main occasion for Paul’s writing was to thank the Philippians for sending financial support along with one of their own, a man named Epaphroditus, who brought the money and his own presence to take care of Paul’s needs while he was in prison. 

Here is Paul, locked up and dependent on others to care for and feed him and this incredible gift arrives from the church he planted in Philippi! Can you imagine the joy. (And Paul's joy over the church's compassion and generosity would not likely fade quickly.)

So the love and fondness Paul expresses in the opening of his letter to the Philippians is deep, heartfelt, and genuine.

Take a look at how Paul starts his letter in verses 3 through 6:

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 

The context explains Paul's gratitude, his joy, and his reason for considering them to be partners in spreading the gospel. 

His theology explains his confidence that the Lord was going to bring them all to spiritual maturity in His time. (Which is what a lot of the remainder of his letter addresses.)