Anyone who has ever felt too young for a great responsibility understands Timothy. He was called to lead a mature church, full of conflict, all while still facing his own fear and insecurity.
Timothy grew up in Lystra, in Asia Minor, the son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father. From childhood he heard the Scriptures from the lips of his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois, who passed on to him a sincere faith even before they knew Paul.
When Paul passed through Lystra on his second missionary journey, the brothers spoke well of the young man. Paul invited him to travel with him and, to avoid obstacles with the Jews of the region, circumcised him, even though this was not required of Gentiles.
From then on, Timothy became Paul’s constant companion. He was sent alone to strengthen the persecuted Christians of Thessalonica, worked alongside the apostle in Corinth, and had his name included in the greeting of several of Paul’s letters.
Paul left him in Ephesus with a difficult task: to correct false doctrines in a church he had not planted alone. In the letters he wrote to him, the apostle reminds him that no one should look down on him for being young, and that God did not give him a spirit of timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.
Those words reveal what the text does not hide: Timothy struggled with fear and perhaps with frail health. Even so, Paul called him a son in the faith and said that no one else cared for the churches with the same sincerity as he did.
The last letter Paul wrote before he died was to Timothy, asking him to come quickly and to bring the cloak and the scrolls. In the end, the firmest apostle of the early church entrusted his work to an insecure but faithful young man.
This says something about how God works: he does not wait for ready-made courage to call someone, he forms courage in those who are already on the way. The faith Timothy inherited only became his own when it was tested, and ours needs that same path too.
