Waiting Activities: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28
Thessalonians is one of the first of Paul’s writings we have. The church at Thessalonica was one of the church’s of which Paul was most fond. In many ways all of his churches were like children to him, and in his family Thessalonica was the on who obeyed the rules and did all the things that would make a Daddy proud. When Paul writes this letter to them, they are a little discouraged. People are dying and it seems to them that Christ return, which was believed to be immanent was not quite as immanent as they might have hoped and this is bothering them. They don’t know what to do now. They are learning what it means to be a people who have to wait, waiting for Christ to come again, waiting for all things to be set right, waiting for the promise of God to all come to fruition.
Cidra was about two years old and Stella was still a tiny baby. We were traveling across country via plane and had a 3 hour lay over in someplace like Columbus. We had been lucky Cidra had slept the first half of the trip, but now, as we settled into our seats at the gate from which our plane would be leaving in a few of hours we had an energetic and awake child on our hands. We sat there for a little while taking some deep breaths and settling in as Cidra proceeded to run back and forth and climb all over the chair between us. We had placed ourselves in front of a window and fed her a snack while we tried to get her to watch the people on the tarmac below or the planes as they taxied around the runway, but as you can imagine, to a two year old Cidra, none of these things were interesting for any measurable length of time. So, I pulled out my magic bag. My magic bag was chock full of small toys, games, coloring books, and what have you all designed to keep one small toddler entertained while we waited. All of them gathered and a few recently purchased to entertain when all other forms of entertainment had failed. I pulled each thing out individually, without reveling anything else I might have up my sleeve, making sure that each toy, games or activity was used to its fullest before resorting to bringing out another. In this way, we whiled away the three hours we spent in that airport and they went by much quicker than we had thought they would. Cidra was entertained; to tell you the truth we were also entertained by entertaining Cidra.
In many senses we are living in a time of lay over. We are living in world in which Christ has already come but he is yet to come again. We are living in a time when Christ has begun to redeem the world but all things have not yet been set completely right. Heaven has come to earth in the form of a baby born in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago and Heaven comes to this world each time we act, react, and speak in ways which exemplify the love of God as seen in the life and teaching of Christ, but the Kingdom is not yet fully seen in this world and will not fully be seen until Christ comes again. In many ways we are between flights. The first flight brought the creator of the universe to earth and showed us the love God has for us and that that love can be lived out in our lives. We were shown what it looks like to live out the goodness of God in every moment of our lives. We saw what humanity can be when we are living our lives in relationship with our creator. And we saw in Christ the depth the lengths God will God to draw all creation back to the goodness and righteousness that was in the beginning. But that was the first flight. Right now we are waiting for the second flight. We are living a layover.
Paul is much like Mike and I with our bag of activities, entertaining ourselves and our antsy daughter while we wait. In this passage Paul is showing the Church the activities that can help us constructively pass the time while we wait. So as we are looking, as we are waiting at this terminal together, what do can we do with ourselves while we wait? What is in Paul’s magic bag of waiting activities?
So what should we do to fill the time we have while we are living through this layover between the Christ who has come and the Christ who will come again? We begin by being the Church, we take care of one another, lift one another up, help each other be better, encourage one another and help those among us who are weak. We are a family who helps each other be the best they can, are there for each other when those around us are in need and are an encouragement. Being nice to each other and helping each other out are primary to the kinds of activities with which we are to be keeping ourselves busy while we are waiting for Christ’s return. Living together as the body of Christ, supporting one another and being there for one another, learning from each other, and listening to those whom God has given us to teach us and guide us. This is what it means to be a family, to do life together.
But that is just the beginning. There are four things which Paul calls us to do always, or continually be doing. The first is a continuation of these first things. We are to always be good to each other and to everyone. Not only are we to be supportive of each other and encourage one another but we are to always be good to one another, but not to just each other to everyone. We begin filling our time by always doing good to everyone, treating everyone with the goodness, the kindness, the love which we experience in and through God. We bring the goodness of God to the lives of those within as well as without the church. Goodness is the mark of the love of God on our lives.
The second thing to which Paul calls us to always be doing is to be joyful. Being joyful is something we often want to make something that it is not. It is easy to believe that being joyful is about always being happy. Having a smile on your face and always sounding upbeat. Joy is actually not so much about our emotional state but more has to do from whence we gain our emotional reserves. Joy is a well of water from which you draw when the land is dry and parched, or even bitter cold. It is a fresh place from whence you pool your emotional sense of stability no matter what is going on, no matter what kind of day you are having, whether the events of the day, week, month or year are generally uplifting or depressing. Joy is a strength of emotionally stability that brings goodness and strength to even the most difficult and weighty situations. It is only when we have joy at the depths of our emotional beings that we are able to rejoice in all things, at all times and it is finding this sense of emotional stability in God that allows us to bring joy to all situations of life. And it is this joy, this rejoicing with which we are to fill our lives and our time as we are in this waiting period.
When joy is in the depths of our being, when that is the strength on which we rely, then we are able to fill our lives with the next thing with which Paul calls us to fill our time. We are to be thankful in all things, at all time. Even when our lives are filled with turmoil and chaos our lives are always filled with much for which we can be thankful. God has given us life and breath, redemption, love, grace. All goodness in our lives, all things that are pure, or wonderful, all these things have their roots in our lives because of the hand of God upon us, and our lives, working in and through our lives and the lives of those around us. And for these things we can be thankful. Living a live of thankfulness recognizes that the goodness, the beauty, the wonderful things around us are blessings for which we are to be eternally and continually thankful.
The last activity to which Paul calls us is to pray, to pray always. The activities to which we are called to live our lives as we wait are a lifestyle built on relying on God in all things at all times, finding our strength and joy in God and being thankful in all things. A life of prayer would just naturally flow from these previous things.
I was young mother, still on maternity leave, so Cidra was less than six weeks old. She was asleep in the stroller and I stood in the antique and tea shop that was just down the street from my house. Since I was on maternity leave, I had very little other than taking care this tiny little baby to fill my time and although she did fill much of my time, I still found that I needed to get out of the house and find other things to do. So I would go down the street to the little antique tea shop and talk with owner. She was a very kind and generous Christian lady who was an active member of the Disciples of Christ church in town. The particular day I have in mind we were talking about prayer life. I was telling her about my Orthodox friend and the ways she had worked to incorporate prayer into her daily life, the things she did and the ways she brought daily prayer into the mundane everyday parts of her life. There was another lady in the shop who had dropped in and out of the conversation. She had established for us that she believed herself to be quite the amazing Christian having corrected several of our misconceptions and have admonished us on things she saw as false beliefs of which we were speaking. To tell you the truth we did not know what to make of her. She had not participated much since we had been talking about my friend. Suddenly she piped up and said, that we really shouldn’t worry about having specific times of prayer, we should be praying continually. “I really don’t understand why people think it is so important to spend hours in prayer,: she explained to us, “Paul tells us our wholes lives should be a prayer. This whole idea of prayer time is completely unbiblical.” At that point I was shocked into silence. Never had I heard something so utterly bizarre in my life.
Paul does call for us to live lives of prayer, lives in which we are always praying, but this does not mean that we abandon a serious prayer life in which we spend significant time praying for the things which God calls for us to pray. No this means that we build prayer into our lives; that we take moments to pray as we go about our daily activities, that we take time in our down time to speak to God about the things that are heavy up on our hearts, bringing our daily struggles to God, sharing our joys and pleasures with God, taking our day to day activities to God; this means that we set aside special time where we spend time alone with God. It does not merely mean any one of these things, but instead means all these of these things. A life of prayer is a life where pray is at home in all parts of our lives. It is a life in which coming to God is a part of all parts of our lives. We live talking to God, we live spending time with God, and we live bathing the good parts, the bad parts, the exciting parts and the dull parts of our lives in the presence of God, speaking to God and bringing God into all parts of our lives.
This is living a life continually connected to God, drawing our strength from God, finding our joy in God, thanking God in all things and bringing every aspect, every moment of our life to God. As we are filling our time, waiting for Christ to return we are good to each other, our lives are filled with joy, thankfulness and prayer.