Catching Up on Christmas Eve

Admin: I received my copy of Corel Word Perfect Office X5 today and it works just fine. The key was legitimate and I’m very happy with the whole thing. Corel allows me to run a copy on my laptop, as well. Yes, I would be glad to have a newer version of MS Office, but I’m not complaining. If you come across a legitimate key for Office 2003 that you aren’t using, I’d love to take it off your hands. For later versions, I’ll accept them but I need a disk. But don’t sweat it if it’s not convenient.
Anyway, as I began to reorganize my collection of documents, I noticed I never did post a study on that tiny little bit of Scripture called Paul’s Letter to Philemon. So without further ado:
Philemon
There is very little we can add to the obvious message of this brief personal note Paul sent to his friend in Colosse. It serves little purpose to embellish the story with speculation and traditions. The runaway slave came into contact with Paul, found Christ and was sent back with this message in the same courier mission that delivered his letter to Ephesus on the way, along with the letter to the entire Christian community at Colosse. The slave belonged to Philemon, the sponsor and likely elder of the church in his house.
Paul would gladly have kept the slave, but was conscientious about his brother’s property. A useless slave named Onesimus (“Useful”) comes home true to his name, now a brother in Christ to the owner. He was sent home by the senior Apostle over all the churches in that region who was in chains, a man who understood the plight of a slave who might feel the need to escape. But the slave gets his heart right and is ready to serve better than most slaves could, because this one was a brother in Christ to his master. Paul asks Philemon to let him assume the slave’s debts, while allowing the slave to assume Paul’s claim on Philemon. The message is a model of the shepherd’s heart.