Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion
Monday 26 November 2012
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1 Thessalonians 3:10 - 12, NJB We are earnestly praying night and day to be able to see you face to face again and make up any shortcomings in your faith. May God our Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, ease our path to you. May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you.
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In this passage from 1st Thessalonians, I would say, Paul is being a little presumptive regarding his judgement of the faith of this worshiping community. Yet you can insert any congregation here. We all have shortcomings regarding our faith. But Paul’s prayer is an earnest request for God to be at work in this congregation. Paul wants to desperately visit with them. Paul loves them and cares for them. He wants them to grow in their love for Christ and for each other. It is my prayer, that Paul’s prayer would be for all congregations, in all times and places. Our human fallibility is not only open to doubts regarding our faith, but distrust, hostility towards one another. Unless you were living very primitively, far from American society, you were a witness to just how depraved and hostile we can be towards each other during this past political campaign. Our political campaigns now celebrate how debased this process has become, rather than being an enlightening and uplifting political process. We have sunk to the lowest common denominator, rather than aspiring to a virtuous ideal.Paul is calling on the Thessalonians to love each other and all people, but he is not saying they have to agree with all people. We all can love and care for each other. This is not that difficult to do. What is difficult to do, is setting aside our differences so that we can love and care for each other. Our humanity gets in the way of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. We engage our divine calling of Kingdom building in fits and starts. It is hard to be a disciple and to be a Kingdom builder. Paul is calling us – with God’s help – to engage this process, to be faithful to this process, not to be successful at this process. We ourselves will never be able to bring about the Kingdom of God; only when Jesus returns will He be able to usher in God’s Kingdom. We start and work on building the Kingdom, Jesus will come and finish the job with us. This is God’s plan for us, this is how God fulfills the divine promise made to us. He sends His Son – to us. This is what we wait and watch for, patiently, with hopeful expectation.
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We pray: The apostle Paul prays for us to love and care for each other. Yet our human vices get in the way of our virtues. Forgive our shortcomings, help us to have courage to strive towards virtue and be righteous before you. In Your Holy Name we pray. Amen.