Tom writes:

“You suffered from your own countrymen…”. For the last 40 years most of us in the UK haven’t suffered much from our own countrymen, unless it has been the ignominy of watching them getting smashed in a penalty shoot-out. This benign incubator for our faith has subtly persuaded many of us that the joy and power of the gospel are best experienced in pleasant places. But it has rarely been so. The New Testament experience shows us that lives filled with the Kingdom and glory of God are most likely to be lived out in environments of strong opposition. And the hardship needn’t affect the joy or power in any meaningful way. You can feel hard pressed and overlooked and still abound in all joy. You can… but it doesn’t just happen. We do some stuff to make it possible.

Paul calls this “stuff” father love and mother love. Showing and receiving both mother love and father love are essential if a church is going to thrive in persecution. Mother love is the coochie coo kind of love that delights in time together. It tickles cheeks and strokes hair. But mother love also works hard to provide; it sacrifices and scrapes things together to nurture and nourish the little cherubs it cares so much about. When you receive mother love you know it; you glow on the inside and you grow in stature. (Just in case you are offended by Paul’s gender-defined language, remember Paul himself showed the Thessalonians “mother love”, so it isn’t something he is saying only women have to do.) And then you also need what Paul calls “father love”. This father love isn’t so much about physical provision as verbal encouragement and direction. Father love cheers “that’s great” and urges you to “keep going”. It looks at you, acknowledges your progress and lovingly encourages you what you can become if you keep doing the right stuff. Father love points to the dizzying delight of doing things like the divine and assures you you can achieve it, if you continue to trust in him. Each of us probably leans more naturally towards showing “mother love” or “father love”. In Jesus we can grow in the other type as well. And when we do, we can, together become a church truly worthy of our God - thriving, growing and overflowing with joy, even in the midst of hardship and trial.

Question for reflection

What kind of love do you show most often? How could you cultivate it and show it even more to Jesus’ people?

1 Thessalonians 2 - Thursday 25th July