Tuesday 25th February
Read 1 Thessalonians 3:6-8
“But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you. 7 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. 8 For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.” (NIVUK)
Paul has repeatedly used the metaphor of family to describe the relationship between believers. It is true because we have all been adopted as sons of God. The language of family makes demands upon our resources and affections that don’t apply to everyone we meet. We often fall short of the ideal.
When we read Paul’s letters though we see glimpses of another, equally important, kind of love. We see friendship. For some of us, if we are honest, we know that sometimes we do not always long to see family – it is an obligation we can’t escape! But when Paul writes to the Thessalonians he writes of pleasant memories on both sides, a genuine companionship, a true friendship.
CS Lewis thought that friendship was a sadly undervalued love. A love that arises from shared activity or thoughts. ‘You become a man’s Friend without knowing or caring whether he is married or single or how he earns his living. What have all these “unconcerning things, matters of fact” to do with the real question, Do you see the same truth? In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about anyone else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy, to serve as pegs for an anecdote; never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts…” (CS Lewis, The Four Loves).
The ‘shared truth’ Paul and the Thessalonians grounded their friendship on was Jesus, a friendship forged in the furnace.
