“Regarding brotherly love, you don’t need any written instructions. God himself is teaching you to love each other… yet we urge you to have more and more of this love, and to make it your ambition to have no ambition.” That is, don’t live a driven life, but a called, present, and caring life. (1Thess.4:9-10 – JB Phillips)
Dear Jesus, on this June Sunday, I need this pace-check, priority-centering passage. I’ve been indulging in a low-grade irritation for a few days—certainly not born out of threatening circumstances. I didn’t go to bed hungry or thirsty last night. I didn’t hear gunfire echoing through my neighborhood. I can still buy and read Bibles of every size, cover, and translation.
My irritants are mainly the common stressors, predictable pressures, and normal messes of life—experienced in a fallen world, among unglorified people, as a selfish man. Long lines, slow traffic, delivery delays, crumbs on the counter, differing opinions… these aren’t exactly like having Godzilla walking through my village, or 7 tarantulas climbing up my bedroom wall.
Thank you for the kind highway patrolman that only gave me a warning ticket. “Sir, where’s the fire?”, he asked. I receive it as a common grace and kind warning from you, Jesus. “Slow down, stay gentle, be present, Scotty. Don’t get ready to love, love now. Dishes in the sink can wait; people in your life keep aging.”
I need to practice more “grace-chill”—to be ambitious not to be ambitious, as J B Phillips put it. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love” (Gal.5:6), not a to-do list expressing itself in irritable-heart-syndrome. So Very Amen.