Reading: 1 Thessalonians 5: 12-end

When I looked at today’s reading from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, in my head I was 12 years old again, reciting my Girl Guide promise. This promise became my moral compass through my teenage years, not of course always lived up to, but always in my mind as I took a bearing on which direction to go. ‘I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people every day, and to keep the Guide Law.’ The Law too speaks of honesty and helpfulness, of sisterhood and learning, of politeness and respect. Like Paul’s letter it seemed to list all the things we should be doing to live a good and Godly life.

Since I was a Girl Guide the promise has been changed many times, most recently to remove the reference to God, not in order to become somehow anti-faith, but to enable those girls who have not grown up with a Christian faith and heritage to experience the joy of service to each other without some kind of ‘religious hurdle’. The current promise reads: ‘I promise that I will do my best, to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the Queen and my community, to help other people and to keep the Guide Law.” Not so different then, and still a set of moral values which can offer spiritual development as well as a clear place in the world around us.

We might regret the dropping of God from this promise for young minds, but the community in which young people live is not as focussed on the established church as when I was a child. Context is important. The Thessalonian church embodied a very particular context – a community which was showing faith, hope and love in Christ; they were already doing really well as Paul points out to them in this letter. He encourages them to keep working hard to keep the faith, to respect those who worked to guide them in the church, to help those who were weakened, to help all who needed them, to live in peace and to strive to do what is good for each other.

Rather than complain about the secularisation of society, perhaps we too need to keep the faith and demonstrate by how we live and relate to each other in community that God is our judge, not we ourselves. Our promise to God is that we must not quench the Spirit but hold fast to what is good and rejoice that we find joy in Him always.