The gospel of peace

What would have happened if Abby Sunderland completed her voyage and successfully become the youngest person to circumnavigate the world? I often wonder what happens to people who achieve record success in their teens. What is there to live for?

But here I am, recently thirty-oned. In the past 400 odd days, I had my first kid, completed my doctorate, my husband found a new job that fits him really well, we moved to a town we both like, bought a house, and are making friends. In checking off so many life goals, I am also faced with the same question, "What else is there to live for?" As far as life goals go, I don't think there are really many more tangible milestones. I might go into academia, but I don't feel like I have to do that. We'll probably have more kids and hopefully they'll grow up living exuberant God-lives and outlive us by many years. But their milestones don't have to be our milestones. So what do we do with the rest of our lives? What is God-life in middle class, suburbia for two introverts?Well, perhaps we can have this ambition--to live a quiet life.

¹¹Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, ¹²so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

~Paul's first letter to believers in Thessalonica, chpt 4

I first encountered this verse as a college freshman and it was the opposite of everything I was hearing. I went to Duke on scholarship, and it always weighed on me that I was expected to make a splash in this world and bring fame and glory to the school. I was learning a lot from the Navigators, a Christian fellowship, and one of their themes was leaving a legacy of reproducing believers. Again, making a splash, just this one would be a kingdom splash. So in the midst of that, wasn't "lead[ing] a quiet life" the antithesis of all the ways I was supposed to make a splash? How could this be an instruction by the Apostle Paul?

As time has rolled by, the verse had made more and more sense. The fact of the matter is that across race, gender, and class, people live with and in a lot of turmoil. Some of the turmoil is really obvious--Haiti, the Gulf Coast, Sudan, Isreal/Gaza, Greece, Iceland, Krygyzstan, and the list goes on. But you know why one of the yards on my block is so beautiful? Because that's how one wife worked out her fear and stress during her husband's cancer treatment. One of the wealthiest people I personally know is buying another beautiful house in an expensive neighborhood because she's getting divorced and has arthritis and the first house she bought has steps she can't manage. Two houses, millions of dollars, and a boatload of loneliness and pain. The quiet life is good news in places of turmoil.

First, the quiet life is hope-full. It's the opposite of desperate and chaotic. Paul says this will "win the respect of outsiders." Second, the quiet life is resource-full. The quiet life isn't "dependent on anybody," instead, it has the time, emotional and physical energy, and material resources to be available to people around. This is graceful living in the guts of life. This gospel of peace is good news in a world of turmoil. So what else is their to live for--the quiet life as kingdom living.