September 29, 2022
Daily Devotion:
"Spiritually Reflective Life"
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
New International Version
11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
He's an ambitious young man, isn't he?" we often say with admiration. Or, “Her ambition is to be a doctor, isn't that wonderful?" By way of disapproval, we might even say, "Too bad he doesn't have more ambition!" For most parents, instilling a sense of ambition in their children seems fundamental. Who would want them growing up without having the best jobs, homes, and status they can acquire? Some professions can hardly be attained without heaps of ambition. Ever known a politician who wasn't ambitious? Or a wealthy business tycoon? A driving ambition is the motivation behind virtually every human success story. At the very least, it is ambition that gets most of us through school and all those dreaded studies thrown our way.
How striking it is, then, to hear Paul speaking of a radically different kind of ambition, and even to put it in terms of "studying," as some translations render it. Paul, a man himself of great ambition, urges us to study to lead a quiet life. In an increasingly clamorous and frantic world, living a spiritually reflective life will require all the more concerted effort. How do you lead a quiet, godly life while frenetically climbing the ladder? Maybe you can't. And if not, which is more important? For all the ambition that parents might wish to instill in their children, perhaps the most important lesson of all is teaching children how to live reflective, godly, and righteous lives. Then again, how is that crucial lesson going to be received if parents themselves are too busy achieving their own career-oriented ambitions?
The question for reflection is: Now that I've spent a good part of my life being ambitious, is it not time to study about living a more meditative and godly life?
