Dear Faith Family,
It seems timely that our conversation over the last few weeks has centered around Paul's admonishment to the Thessalonian faithful to "aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs" (1 Thess. 4:11). Circumstantially we find our selves with little choice but to focus on the ordinary routines and relationships necessary to get by each day. Similarly, we are encouraged to quiet our activities and keep to ourselves, all of which is wise caution for both our health and our neighbors.
I don't know about you, but I hear the warnings of leaders and experts, and couple those with Paul saying "mind your own affairs," and I am tempted to check-out. Check-out of responsibilities and relationships that would get me too mixed up in other people's "affairs" and germs.
I'll all to easily avoid you and busy myself with me even when I am not being encouraged to do so! So, while social distancing is prudent and neighborly at this moment, as those "taught by God to love one another" (1 Thess. 4:9), we must, however, not let this moment justify our self-absorbed tendencies.
In fact, "mind your own affairs," actually encourages me away from self-absorption, and into prudent living. Remember that Paul's counsel is given in the context of "more and more...brotherly love" (1 Thess. 4:10) or what we can call familial friendship. In this context, minding our own affairs means taking proper and proportionate responsibility for what we have specifically been given to do, care for, and cultivate.
Each of us has everyday roles and relationships within our home, community, faith family, and society for which we have been uniquely created, divinely commissioned, and are graciously accompanied in helping to flourish. That is your business, "your own affairs," which Paul says pay attention!
While there are similarities and overlaps in these everyday roles and relationships, they are also distinct, specifically special, for each of us. Expect in this way: to avoid them or to attempt them in any other means, then what we have been "taught by God" always leads to less life, not more. We are neither couch-potatoes nor messiahs in everyday living but have a proper and proportionate place somewhere in between.
If we don't take proper and proportionate responsibility for the relationships which make up our existence, we end up judging but not loving, meddling but not serving, helping but in ways that harm, comparing and contrasting, seeing others weaknesses while ignoring our own, and using the word arrogantly or ignorantly but not being "doers of the word," just to name a few examples. Yet, if in the 'more and more' of familial affection we can mind our own affairs, not in self-absorbed avoidance of others or self-centered serving, but properly and in proportion, we can wisely share the burdens of each other in this and any moment, even as we each carry our own load (Gal. 6:2,5).
So, may we "mind our own affairs," to the momentary and eternal health of one another, and in so doing, fulfill the law of Christ.