A quiet life

that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you,- 1 Thessalonians 4.11

Did you ever notice how loud life tends to be these days? It seems that loud is good and louder is better. I am not talking about volume or loud music or anything like that. I am talking about life simply being loud. A loud life is just want it sounds like. It is busy and hectic.

I like the old Andy Griffeth Show. I like a song Rascal Flatts sings about it and I think it captures what this 'loud life' is all about.

Sometimes it feels like this world

Is spinning faster

Than it did in the old days

So naturally, we have more

Natural disasters

From the strain of a fast pace

Sunday was a day of rest

Now it's one more day for progress

And we can't slow down 'cause

More is best

It's all an endless process

The church is not immune to this loud, active, past paced life. Christians are not immune either. We don’t have time for a ‘day of rest.’ We think ‘more is best’ like the rest of the world does.

Paul says here that we are to live a quiet life. Barnes puts it this way – ‘Orderly, peaceful; living in the practice of the calm virtues of life. The duty to which he would exhort them was that of being subordinate to the laws; of avoiding all tumult and disorder; of calmly pursuing their regular avocations, and of keeping themselves from all the assemblages of the idle, the restless, and the dissatisfied. No Christian should be engaged in a mob; none should be identified with the popular excitements which lead to disorder and to the disregard of the laws’

Quietness is scary. If we stay busy we don’t have to deal with the really important things like God dealing with us.

‘Mind your own business’ goes along with that. We have enough to deal with in our own relationship with God that we don’t have to ‘stick our noses’ in everyone else’s affairs. Remember the proverb that says that when we get involved in affairs that our not our own it is like grabbing a dog by the ears?

And finally ‘work with your own hands.’

So to summarise the Christian is to be marked by a quiet life, staying out of the limelight and staying out of things which are not his concern while he works away to provide for his family. Our homes should be safe and quiet places where people can find rest and the love of God.