2 Thessalonians 3:16: Peace in Every Way

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.

2 Thessalonians 3:16 (NIV)

Peace in Every Way

There’s a man on the volunteer roll who hasn’t turned out to a call in fourteen months. He still has the pager and the jacket with his name across the back, and he comes to the pancake breakfast and works the griddle, and every person in that hall knows both of those things about him.

The Tuesday meeting starts the way it always starts. The chief says the prayer, and he prays for the department, for the ones on the roll and the ones who are out, and he doesn’t leave anybody out of it and doesn’t put a hook in it anywhere. Then he says amen and goes to the second item on the agenda, which is the attendance requirement and what happens to people who don’t meet it.

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. Paul writes that to people he has just been correcting. Some of them won’t work and expect to be fed, and he’s told the others to keep away from those same people and to warn them as fellow believers. None of it is settled when he asks for peace over all of them.

He asks for it at all times and in every way, and every way takes in the ways people wouldn’t pick. Peace with the man you’ve just been told to warn. Peace on the week when the ones who won’t work go on not working and everybody knows it. Paul puts that in front of the Lord of peace himself, and the trouble is wide open while he does it.

The Lord be with all of you. All of you covered the ones who wouldn’t work and the ones who’d been told how to handle them.

The item passes. The man with the pager votes for it, and afterward he stands at the urn talking to the chief about a truck part, and neither of them mentions the other thing.