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

We are taught in this passage how similar one child of God is to another.⁵⁶ We look on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being great and blessed—we think that they lived in a higher region than we do. We cannot think that if they had lived in these times they would have been Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We suppose that these are very bad days and that any great height of grace is not easily attainable. But if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had lived now, instead of being less, they would have been greater saints—for they only lived in the dawn, and we live in the noon. The apostles are called Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Thus they are set up on an elevated niche. If we had seen Peter and Paul, we would have thought them very ordinary people—wonderfully like ourselves. If we had gone into their daily lives and trials, we would have said, “You are superior to what I am in grace. But somehow you are people like me. I have a quick temper; so have you, Peter. I have a thorn in the flesh; so have you, Paul. I complain of rheumatism, and the apostle Paul, when aged, feels the cold and wants his cloak.”

The Bible is not intended for transcendental, superelevated souls—it is an everyday book. These people were everyday people, only they had more grace, but we can get more grace as well. The fountain at which they drew is as full and free to us as to them. We only have to believe in their fashion and trust to Jesus in their way, and although our trials are the same as theirs, we will overcome.

I like to see religion brought out in everyday life. Tell me about the godliness of your shop, your counter, and your kitchen. Let me see how grace enables you to be patient in the cold or joyful in hunger or industrious in labor. Grace is no common thing, yet it shines best in common things. To preach a sermon or sing a hymn is a paltry thing compared with the power to suffer cold and hunger and nakedness for Christ’s sake.

Courage then, fellow pilgrim, the road was not smoothed for Paul any more than it is for us. There was no royal road to heaven in those days other than there is now. They had to go through sloughs and bogs and mire as we do still. But they have gained the victory at last, and even so shall we. – Charles Spurgeon

 Diana Wallis, Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church’s Great Preachers, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001), 64.