Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV)
God’s Will, Said Plainly
The vents along the greenhouse roof crack open on their own once the sun gets high enough, and by ten in the morning the whole place smells like wet dirt and tomato leaves. The woman who took it over at fifty walks the rows with a hose that’s too short for the far end, so she does the far end first and works back toward the door. Some mornings the trays are up and some mornings they aren’t, and she’s in there before her shift either way.
Paul was telling a young church to warn the idle, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, and be patient with everyone. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Christians ask what God wants from them the way a driver asks for directions. God’s will for you, in Christ Jesus, is that you’re glad, that you pray, that you say thank you.
And it’s addressed. Paul writes God’s will for you in Christ Jesus, to a congregation he’d left in a hurry and worried about ever since. Whatever else God wants out of a life, this much of it has been said plainly to them and to whoever reads it after them.
The thanks is given in all circumstances. Paul knew what some of theirs were, because he’d been writing to these same people about the ones among them who had died. The circumstances stay exactly what they are, and the thanks comes up out of the middle of them.
Always, continually, in all circumstances. He’s asking for these three at a rate, and you can start a rate on an ordinary Monday without feeling much of anything about it.
She keeps a thermometer on a nail by the door and looks at it on the way in and on the way out. The greenhouse was warm right through a winter when there was nothing in it, because she paid to keep it that way.
A Prayer to Remember
Put something in front of me today that I can be glad about, God, and let me see it while it’s still happening. I’ve been noticing good things a week after they happen, the way you find a note in a coat pocket in the fall. Get me there on the day.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
