Engaged

DEVOTION
1 THESSALONIANS
ENGAGED
1 Thess 5:25-28
25 Brothers, pray for us. 26 Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. 27 I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. 28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
NIV
The end of the letter sees valediction, the closing thought as it were, the sincerely yours. But here it includes so much more. The Lord is not finished with instruction. It apparently is important for me to pray for others and to greet others with a holy kiss. I think the whole of that idea is based on the simple fact I do not stand alone. I am a part of a community in which I am required to participate. I cannot be idle or just be a bystander; I must be engaged within the community I live in. Now that is the of course the community of believers, the local church. I surely would not go around greeting all my physical neighbors with a holy kiss, heaven rebid! Now I suppose it would be appropriate to pray for my neighbors in that the Holy Spirit would speak to their hearts about repentance and acceptance of Jesus. But my prayers for my fellow believers, those in my community of faith are a different matter. How am I to pray for them? What should the focus of my prayers be? Should I pray for their health or for their success in their endeavors of life? Should I just pray that God would bless them? Should I pray for their spiritual growth? Remember who I am praying to should have some bearing on what I am praying for. I think perhaps my prayer should be more alone the lines of asking God to simply have his way with them. Although I do think it would be alright to ask him to bless them, to guide them, to protect them, to use them for the benefit of his kingdom, to keep his hand upon them and thoughts like that. I think again the point is that I should be focused them and their relationship with God. That focus would then be physically demonstrated by my greeting them with a holy kiss, rather than a wave across the foyer. Or maybe then that passing “how ya doing” as I travel down the hall to class, or even just the handshake in greetings during the service. How worldly have our greetings become? How polite. Now care surely is needed in greeting the women of the church. I can’t just go around kissing them all, can I? So then what is a holy kiss? A pure, morally blameless kiss would be describing it I think. So then pure in thought and pure in deed would be alright. But keeping to the basics, I must be engaged with my fellow believers, that is it in a nutshell. And I will surely accept the influence upon my heart, his grace being with me. Amen.