Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5 (April 22, 2025)

April 22, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5

Happy Easter my good friends in Christ!

May God bless you on this beautiful desert morning. Today please keep Sue in your prayers as she recovers from her second eye surgery and pray for Donna as she has a cardiac ablation (stopping and restarting her heart) in an attempt to relieve her irregular heartbeat. At church we have two youth members who will be graduating in May from City High School. Please keep them both in your prayers to still be focused during these last four weeks of their senior year. One is headed off to NAU in Flagstaff, and the other plans to attend the fire academy. May God bless both of you young men in your future lives. I forgot to give thanks to God yesterday in our list of people who helped to make our worship on Easter very special. Please give thanks for Robert and Sharyn who assisted at the altar throughout the service, leading Easter Liturgy and distributing Holy Communion. 

Today we move into the third chapter of Paul's first letter to the Thessalonian church.

So far, we have heard of the Thessalonian's strong and vibrant faith which others have experienced in the world. We discovered both Paul's and their struggles with persecution. We heard Paul emotionally describe his inability to return to Thessalonica as he headed south to Athens, and his deep sense of loss because of their mutual absence from one another. Today we discover one of the ways in which Paul chooses to compensate for his absence. He does what so many others in our world today do when they are unable to be personally presence for some important event(s) which they had hoped to attend. Paul sends out an envoy, Timothy, in order that the people of Thessalonica will know that Paul's heart is truly with them in spite of his absence from them. Paul is just like parents who are really concerned about the choices of their children when the children come of age. Then decisions get made out in the community without Dad or Mom able to be there to suggest a direction, or to comfort them in a life mistake, and when things go too far astray, Parents break their promise to themselves to set this child free to face the world and expand their ability to cope with the consequences of their choices.  Yes! Paul is doing the same thing, and then with no cell phone to contact the Thessalonians, he must send someone to check to make certain that they are doing OK in the face of the persecution that Paul had warned them about. These questions may sound especially familiar. Are they safe!?  Have they been hurt!?  Are they using common sense and the strength that I taught them as they came to faith, or have they already fallen away from Christ!?  For Paul, the good news that Timothy returns with from Thessalonica is that the new Christians are really doing very well as they face these problems in their faith lives. It is obvious that Paul really does feel like a parent with them in their faith journey.  For Paul faith is about a person's trust in God and the Gospel, accepting the central truth of the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and how a person's faith continues to grow throughout life as the trials and tribulations of the world and sin break in the faith that we have.  Paul is unable to bear the thought that these new, energetic people who have such bold faith might fall away from all of it due to the persecution which surrounds them at every turn. What do you and I expect when we follow Jesus? If we think our faith will take us into our lives to have no troubles or problems, then our faith is likely to fail, because this rarely happens for anyone in their lives. But, if our faith is our courage and strength, surrounded by Christ's love, as we face our own brokenness and the brokenness of others, then we will find the peace of Christ which gives us the resources of His faith gift as we handle everything that will come our way.   When Timothy came back, Paul learned that the powerful gift of faith which he had imparted, and the Holy Spirit had grown in the Thessalonian Christians, was not weak, but as strong as he had hoped it would be.

I hope that you find peace in your life today and always, surrounded by Christ Love.

Pastor Kim