When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas. ((2 Timothy 4:13))

How utterly forsaken the apostle was by his friends!²⁵ If he had no cloak of his own, couldn’t someone lend him one? Ten years before, the apostle was brought in chains along the Appian Way to Rome. Fifty miles before he reached Rome, members of the church came to meet him. When he came within twenty miles of the city, a still larger posse of the disciples came to escort him, so that the chained prisoner Paul went into Rome attended by all the believers in that city. But, ten years later, nobody comes to visit him. He is confined in prison, and they do not even know where he is, so Onesiphorus, when he comes to Rome, has to seek him out. People have so forgotten him and the church has so despised him that he is friendless. The Philippian church, ten years before, had made a collection for him when he was in prison. Now he is old, and no church remembers him. Poor soul, he served his God and worked himself down to poverty for the church’s sake, yet the church has forsaken him! Oh! how great must have been the anguish of the loving heart of Paul at such ingratitude.