These were real people.

I've gotten to the part of my Bible reading where you start getting into all those little short New Testament books, like Titus and Philemon.  There are many little chapters and verses which have some standalone recognition in that part of the Bible.  (There are probably a few thousand women's Bible studies on Titus 2, alone.)  But there was a few simple little verse at the end of II Timothy, in chapter 4, that caught my attention:

¹³The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.

The beautiful simplicity of this verse struck me for the first time with the fact that Paul was a real man, who lived and walked on the earth, and this is the actual words he wrote to his fellow believers.  In between all the beautiful poetry and doctrine of the scriptures, is a guy asking his friends to bring some of his stuff with them when they come to see him.  (And as a fellow lover of the written word, I can greatly relate to his urging, "especially the parchments".)

This would be like if, a thousand years from now, Christians studying our church in this age were reading the e-mails our LifeGroup sends out to each other.  "Please pray for X's job interview, and will the Y family still be able to provide dinner next week?"

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