Paul went through it all. Friends and co-workers abandoned him, some he sent away, few believers harmed him. He is not lovey-dovey about it.

Demas, who was on his team when Paul was in prison, left the ministry for he was lured to the promises of success, pleasure and power. Let’s hope that at least he made it at the end. Titus, we assume, is the guy to whom Paul wrote, so he was around. Luke, the loyal guy, was sticking around for good and later produced life of Jesus and the turbulent glorious days of the early believers. Alexander must have been a pain in the b… and Paul being choleric and all, forgives him by hoping God to avenge his harm and warns young Timmy to set some boundaries in place.

Paul says that at the most crucial time, most of his friends deserted him and he excuses their negligence in a somewhat passive-aggressive style.

What he asks for is a coat and paper, a small comfort and means to communicate with the small bands of Jesus followers. It’s possible that he asks for the Old Testament. What else was left in his life to care about?

(From 2018:)

Pioneering is very lonely. It's a constant battle with your own inadequacies, total trust in the promises and the vision of God with absolute abandonment in His timing and leadership while carrying the cross of continual inner and external tension. It is always being steps ahead and leading others through the Red Sea and listening to their longings for onions and garlic when you are living already in a promised land and so their paradigm has not moved into yours yet and often the desire to walk through the desert is not even established in their outlook on life. The prophetic insight has to be received (communion), has to die (the process) and has to be resurrected (transformation) in those who follow on God's terms and the end of it is always unknown because you can not make it happen, you can only offer the transfer of real life.

It is lonely because you do not have anyone beside you when you need to pave the way. You have to be misunderstood, omitted, questioned, you have to be resisted and tried, often not trusted and left alone because of the call for totality.

It is lonely because when they finally enter the promised land and put a banquet after banquet, they think it is their personal effort that put them there. They do not remember the years of the call, they are submerged in the NOW. So your joy is in relinquishing of your grit and seeing the fruit for which you will not be gratified as your words seem like an echo in a distance of forgotten ideas. Your only reward has to be the One who Never Forgets.

2 Tim 4:10-17: “Beloved: Demas, enamored of the present world, deserted me and went to Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. Luke is the only one with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is helpful to me in the ministry. I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus in Troas, the papyrus rolls, and especially the parchments.

Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. You too be on guard against him, for he has strongly resisted our preaching.

At my first defense no one appeared on my behalf, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it.”