For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you. —1 Thessalonians 1:4
Several years ago I was traveling home to Nashville from California. My plane made a stop in Memphis, but the same plane I was in was headed next to my home city. Unusually tired from a week of work in California, I decided to stay on the plane while we refueled and got a fresh load of passengers.
Unable to gather enough energy to read anything or catch up on correspondence, I sat there in my window seat, gazing at the other planes on the tarmac. Soon I was mesmerized by something I had never noticed before. In fact, as tired and punchy as I was, this thing became so humorous to me that I began to laugh—not, however, loud enough for my fellow passengers to be concerned for their own safety.
What I saw was the contrast between the gargantuan size of these huge aircrafts, compared to the tiny wheels that transported them from place to place. The dissimilarity was laughable.
Once airborne again, I laid my head back on the headrest and considered what I had just seen. I remember thinking, Airplane wheels look funny beneath these lumbering giants. But these wheels are only necessary when the planes are on the ground for refueling. Planes aren’t built for airports; they’re designed to roar into the sky—to fly. And when they do, their microscopic wheels are completely invisible.
Paul, Silvanus (or Silas), and Timothy were writing a letter—a thank-you note—to their friends in Thessalonica. In the text we read today, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy celebrated that God’s message had successfully reached these Christians through them. These three rejoiced that their brothers had been chosen by God, that the message had been delivered to them with the Holy Spirit’s power and deep conviction, that they had learned how to become imitators of their teachers and their Lord despite tough circumstances, and that they were joyful.
What a great list of things for these Christian brothers to celebrate! But as good as these things are, they are essentially “airport things.” They’re necessary and they’re right, but they’re all about refueling and mechanical service. If these brothers had received this affirmation from the three faithful teachers so they could lumber around the church on their tiny wheels, it would have been a terrible shame.
But this didn’t happen. These brothers got refueled, received a fresh crew, slogged to the active runway, and then did what they were meant to do: they soared.
How do we know? Paul wrote, “For the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith in God has gone out” (vv. 7–8).
There has never been a time in church history when Christians have more information available to them than now—books, study Bibles, podcasts, faith-based websites, video streams of brilliant teachers of the Word, and meetings and conferences where they can hear these teachers speak. But has all this information made Christians any more effective in changing their culture?
The answer ought to be clear. This is good stuff, but it’s airport tarmac stuff. God calls us to fly and to do His will while we tell others about Christ by our own example. That’s what He made us to do.