Are we a “joy” family or a “peace” family? My daughter and I talk about that each year when we put up our Christmas decorations. We have several pieces among our decorations that say either “joy” or “peace.” Neither of those is easy to live out in our day. There is much around us that doesn’t make for peace and it is just plain hard to be joyful all the time. Both peace and joy take practice.
Our video clip for this week offers a fun way to think about this. We will be showing a clip from the extra items on the DVD of the movie “Evan Almighty.” It is segment on how they trained the animals for that movie. For those who have not seen the movie, it is modern day "Noah's Ark" story with lots of animals on the set.
This lesson from 1 Thessalonians invites us to practice rejoicing. While Thessalonians is one of the earliest writings that we have in the New Testament, it already raises the question of how to remain hopeful even though Jesus did not return as quickly as the early Christians thought he would. Paul is instructing the church on how to live in the meanwhile – the time between Christ’s first and final advents.
We still live in the “in between” time. Even after all these centuries, we still need to practice our waiting skills. We need to train ourselves. What wisdom can we find in this passage on how to live as Christians? What practices does Paul offer to us for this “in between” time? What kind of training do we need?
Monday, December 8, 2008
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