When 2022 started, I decided to set a few goals for myself.

One of them, you see here- a commitment to writing something on this blog every day.

Another goal I set was to read through the New Testament during the year by taking it one chapter at a time, reading just 5 chapters a week.

This exercise, too, has been a project in discipline, but in its case, I am appreciating reading through it at a higher level than I usually would. Instead of trying to squeeze all meaning out of each paragraph, each sentence, or each word, I have been reading each document chapter by chapter, and trying to digest each chapter in its place in the larger book or epistle.

And I will say that the letters and books all have read thus far have flown by pretty quickly.

Today, my reading took me to the first chapter in the the letter to the Thessalonians, and within it, Paul (with Silas and Timothy) lauds the Thessalonian believers after his greeting, saying he knows about them broadly because of the reports others have told him about them. In a time of great trial, those who joined the nascent church there released any claims that any pagan temple or shrine had on them, and leapt fully into their commitments to Jesus, because they believed the gospel message they had heard- about the God of Israel, and the Resurrected One, who would return in the coming future to right the world’s wrongs.

In cheering these people, Paul says he and his companions remember the Thessalonians for “their work… their labor… their endurance” inspired by their faith, hope, and love for Christ. “Your faith in God has become known everywhere”, Paul states. “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.”

Reading this chapter I was struck by the balanced employ of faith and work by the Thessalonians, as te expression of their connection to Christ.

And it made me stop for a moment, and ask myself, “How, in how I am living out my daily life today, am I expressing my confidence in God and his goodness towards me, through the kindness I am showing others in my life?”

The Thessalonians sanctioned their faith through their disposition to serve, which is the posture that any imitator of Jesus should eventually find and assume, because serving completes one’s commitment to Christ.

It’s funny. In COVID World 2022, I still have found many many ways to keep my mind and my hands occupied with an overflow of daily tasks that keep me from pausing and remembering that Jesus said those who would walk in his path would be servants, looking out for others around them.

I am busy each evening trying to check boxes off of my list of daily must-do’s that have little relevance to the thought and care of others I know.

I need, with His help, to change this way of my thinking and living.

“And he said to them, ‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.’”
– Mark 9:34-35