Peaceful and Quiet Lives


 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your heart to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  Colossians 3: 16-17

I’ve “grown up” in the faith reading about people like Elizabeth Elliot, Amy Carmichael, and Peter Lord. I always thought that in order to please God, in order to be a good Christian, I had to do something BIG! I lived those early years in fear that God would ask me to send my kids to a mission school so my husband and I could minister on some dangerous foreign field. Not that I was afraid of ministering in danger, I was hopeful of and expecting that, I just didn’t want to be separated from my kids! Time went on and while my husband kept getting to do exciting and dangerous things, I mostly just stayed at home watching over our family. Sometimes it didn’t feel fair. Sometimes I felt relieved.

A while back I encountered a passage in 2 Timothy:

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people-- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.  1Ti 2:1-2 NIV

Peaceful and quiet lives. You mean that Paul didn’t want us all to aspire to be shipwrecked and beaten and snake bitten and stoned? It’s actually ok to live peaceful and quiet lives?

The key here is how those lives are lived. Our verses today lay that out quite well. God’s Word is to dwell in us richly. We are to be filled with it to overflowing, so that it comes out of us in the way of teaching and exhorting (urging, encouraging, pushing) with wisdom and singing songs, hymns and spiritual songs with grace in our hearts. The important thing is not whether we are doing something that is perceived as great or small by man, but that all we do in word or deed be done in Jesus’ Name, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. That could be building an orphanage in a jungle or building a peanut butter sandwich for a toddler. Both are necessary. Both are sacred.

Here's the Thing: It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. When you do something right, that’s what makes it great.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

At least it's not bad news

Image
  Radical tumor removal is not always possible because of the critical brainstem or diencephalic locations of some tumors. Tumor progression and eventual death are likely in such patients. Stereotactic radiosurgery for pilocytic astrocytomas part 1: outcomes in adult patients Kano et. al.  So my posts are usually preceded by a scripture verse, often an encouraging one. Today I needed to give you an insight into what I've been experiencing. From the time I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, about a year and a half ago, I was reassured that it was a "WHO grade 1 benign" tumor. I, mistakenly, took this to mean that it wasn't a big deal. Even when I was told in June that it had grown "slightly," I thought that meant they'd zap it with radiation and that'd be the end of it. Guess what, I was wrong. When my June MRI revealed growth, I was referred to the Tumor Center for treatment. Fearing a long, drawn-out process, I was relieved when they scheduled all my...
Read more

The Next Crazy Thing

Image
Buckle in! This is a processing post so it is likely to be long and wordy and emotional and probably flawed in many ways. I thank you for your patience and anyone who makes it to the end gets bonus points in my book 😏.  Let's start with the info. I've been having progressively more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting migraines. Since my eye surgery in May, I've also been experiencing a great deal of nausea, almost daily. Sometimes meds help (with either), sometimes they don't. In addition, since the eye surgery, my double vision has intensified. My depth perception is shot, I'm regularly missing things I grab for, mistaking curbs for cracks in the sidewalk, bumping into walls or counters. Those are the three things that neurosurgery told us to watch for with regards to the shunt functioning properly: headaches, nausea, and vision changes. Now the vision changes were probably because of the surgery and the nausea was probably  because of the migraines, but th...
Read more

When "Wait and See" Wouldn't Sound so Bad

Image
    Ten days after I received the call letting me know that they found something on the MRI I was sitting in the office of a Neurosurgeon.  I have no doubt that God orchestrated the circumstances that had brought me there, including a friend who is also dealing with a brain tumor recommending this clinic. But how could any of this be real? Only a couple of people knew what was going on, but there wasn't much to know before this appointment. All we had were a few key phrases on the MRI Study Result and our dear friend, Dr. Google.  I went into the appointment with the impression that the doctor would either recommend watching and waiting, doing another MRI in six months and seeing if anything changed, or taking it out right away.  In previous encounters where the option was to wait or do something I have vastly preferred doing something, but this time it was different. I had read about the potential complications of surgery and I was scared.  Not to men...
Read more