God is
good.
I
know. No big surprise there, right? After all, this is a spiritual blog. So beginning with that statement seems like
the old no-brainer. But sometimes it
pays to say the things that we already know just because we need to hear them
one more time in our life. For example,
take today’s reading. Thanksgiving comes
on a different day of the year every year.
So there is absolutely no way to plan a particular reading for
Thanksgiving each year. I have to take
what the schedule gives me. But what do
we have today? Today’s chapter has some
incredible Thanksgiving content. I
didn’t plan it, but God did! He’s so
good with His ability to make the small details work out just right.
To Those Under A Yoke
Paul
begins this chapter with a note about those under a yoke of slavery. Paul is quite clear that those slaves who
have Christian masters must not be disrespectful. This is actually a really hard piece of
advice for us to hear today, because Paul is actually advocating that
Christianity and slavery are not mutually exclusive. {And in
only the right context, I don’t believe them to be, either. After all, how many times does Paul call
himself a slave of Christ?}
You see,
one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is grace and mercy given out
towards the community. The nuts and
bolts of what Paul is trying to say here is this. If you have a master who may give you orders
and expect you to work, but the master also treats you with Christian love and
human decency, why would you not submit?
After all, are we not all slaves to God?
We should be able to treat one another with solid human decency
regardless of whether the other person is simply an employer or a full-fledged
master. This passage isn’t about human
domination; it is about learning to treat each other in a Christ-like fashion
regardless of how our stations in life cause us to interact with one another. Is there anything inherently sinful about
being a slave – especially a slave of someone who treats me with respect for my
life?
Exhortation
Jumping
down to the end of the chapter, Paul’s words of exhortation to Timothy are
inspiring. Paul focuses in really hard
on the purpose of life. Fight the good
fight. Hold fast to the confession of
belief. This is such an incredibly
difficult practice, but it so important.
Our time on earth is measured in years.
Our time with God will be measured in an infinite day. We should be mindful to focus on the infinite
rather than fretting over the finite.
We aren’t
to focus on wealth. We aren’t to focus
on riches. Station in life is fairly
meaningless to God. We are to be more
concerned about generosity than hording treasure on this world. We are to be more concerned about the
treasures awaiting God’s people in heaven than the worldly trinkets that we
seek after so well. I really like how
Paul tells Timothy to guard the deposit that has been entrusted to him. We would all be wise to listen to that piece
of advice every day. Guard the deposit
of faith that God has offered to each of us!
What a
wonderful segue into Thanksgiving. If I
loop back into the middle of the chapter, Paul talks a bit about the false
teachers and the things that they get wrong.
But then Paul talks to us about what is really important in life.
Godliness
and contentment is an incredible gain.
This really hit me today on Thanksgiving. Am I really godly? Trust me, yesterday as I drove to Walmart I
realized just how ungodly of a frame of mind I was carrying around with me. So I had some serious repenting to do – and
my day got worse before it got better. Am
I godly? Sure, I spend time in God’s
Word every day. I have wonderful
spiritual conversations with friends. I
do look for ways to be repentant and confess my shortcomings. So I have come a long way with respect to
godliness. But there are still more
things upon which I can work!
What about
the other word? Am I content? Am I grateful to simply have food, water,
clothing, and shelter? I have people
around me that care about me – am I content with that? I have God’s Word to sustain me – am I
content with that? I have the promise of
eternal life – am I content?
It is so
hard to be content in this world. It used to be that I was content playing a
board game by myself. Yes, I was one of
those freaky kids who would play a 6 person game of Risk all by myself and
honestly be able to compete against myself in 6 different ways. I used to be content playing outside with my
imagination and a few friends. I used to
be content lying out in the grass. Granted,
I lived in Minnesota where there weren’t fire ants, so it was quite a bit
safer, LOL! But today I find myself
bombarded with ads about how great the newest cell-phone is. I find myself bombarded with information
about the latest upgrade to the Bible Software program I use. Am I really content?
I think I
have much to learn today. I need to learn
again what it means to be content – and then apply it to my life. What a wonderful place to end on this day of
giving thanks. God, thank you for your
generosity in my life, and help me to understand how to be content with what
you have so richly provided for me.
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