A few weeks ago I felt comfortable, for the first time in 18 months, inviting our church council to choose to meet in-person rather than on Zoom for our regular monthly meeting. Earlier in the pandemic, I regularly faced the question, “Why can’t we do this in person?” So I was mildly surprised when now they overwhelmingly expressed a preference for the Zoom meeting. Two council members, in particular, live 30 minutes away in the country and the ease of joining the meeting from home won out easily over driving country roads in the dark and rain of this time of year.
Yet those face to face encounters remain important. Even with faces partially covered by masks, most of our congregation has been thrilled to return to in-person worship services. It is a gift of love to be able to look into each other’s eyes as we gather, without the mediation of a camera and screen, even as wonderful as that technology is.
Without the benefit of Zoom and only the (amazing in itself) technology of writing, Paul in our text, I Thessalonians 3:9-13, was feeling that same desire for face to face interaction. Verse 10 says to the believers in Thessalonica, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.”
Just as a great deal of instruction has taken place over Zoom and other electronic media during the pandemic, Paul accomplished an incredible amount of instruction via the writing of letters. The resulting epistles still bless and instruct God’s people today. Yet even immediately engaged in the writing of what would be sacred Scripture, Paul expressed his longing to offer the Thessalonians something he felt to be lacking and which could not be restored by the writing of a letter.
I have to imagine that at least part of what Paul meant to communicate with his actual presence is what he prays for them in verse 12, “And now may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another, just as we abound in love for you.” That desire is followed in verse 13 by Paul’s petition for their sanctity and blamelessness “at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” The thoughts are connected. It is abounding in love which will “strengthen your hearts in holiness.”
It is instructive to us that Paul connects physical presence to love and love to holiness and, finally, holiness to readiness for the return of Christ. As we in this church calendar season of Advent consider how Jesus came first in “the fullness of time,” as Galatians 4:4 says, let us think on what the “fullness of time” might be for His second Advent. At the least it seems it will be a time for Christians to renew their love, to abound in the practice of that most basic teaching of our Lord. And, it seems that now, as much as ever, is the time for love, an abundance of it.