We have only a bare-bones mention of the Philippian jailer. He received Paul and Silas, beaten and bleeding; he fastened them in the painful stocks; after his conversion, he personally dressed their wounds and then fed them at his own table. What other changes grew from the jailer's new Christian faith? Let us attempt to stretch some living flesh over those bare bones.

Call me Quintus, but my name doesn't matter. Most people just see me as a slave, a piece of the house furniture, nothing more. My master is the town jailer, just that, and most people don't bother to call his name: he’s the jailer, nothing more.

But there is more. That’s all he was and all I was, but now there is more. He’s a child of God: still the jailer, but now a child of God. And I'm a child of God: still a slave, but…