Note how Jesus referred to this continuum in John 17:20: I pray not only for these, but also “for those who will believe in me through their message.”
To what location did Paul and Silas first go in Thessalonica?
“the synagogue”
How many Sabbaths did they serve in Thessalonica? “3”
Carefully read Acts 17:2-3. What method did Paul use in his approach to the Thessalonians?
“[intelligent] reasoning from the [Old Testament] scriptures that [the Messiah] Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that Jesus was He [and was the fulfillment of these prophecies].”
Compare the relative number of Jews, who were persuaded in Thessalonica to the number of devout Greeks (Acts 17:4)
“‘Some of the Jews’ versus ‘a large number of God-fearing Greeks’ (‘and not a few prominent women’). Sometimes I feel a little sad for Paul – I’m sure he was pleased and excited about all new converts and loved all these new believers, but he had such a heart for his own Jewish people, and they kept breaking it with their vehement rejection of Jesus as Messiah.”
“It strikes me that this mix is not entirely unlike our congregation at the Bridge these days: a portion who have been there for decades (who’ve ‘grown up born again’), and some who’ve transferred from similar churches, but a larger number who are new believers and new disciples, knowing and learning truth from the Word for the first time. Praise God!”
How many leading women joined Paul and Silas?
“‘not a few’ maybe a dozen or two ?”
All it takes to lead is for people to see you following Jesus.
“(That’s good because I don’t like to ‘lead’ as such.)”
He [Christ] also prayed with fervent intention for those who would believe in Him today.
We are not colorful clay that God has rolled into a ball of grey.
Name three specific characteristics that make you different from your family or friends (tastes, learning style, personality). As you do, try to appreciate your distinctiveness as a child of God instead of resisting it.
“Instead of going gray, I have opted to go purple (to match the majority of my wardrobe).
“I love and thrive on games and puzzles and spend far too many hours of the day and the night playing and solving them.
“I love stories on TV, especially Doctor Who and other science fiction.”
In the address, printed in the first verse of 1 Thessalonians, Paul pictured the faces of those original Thessalonians: some Jews, ‘a great number of God-fearing Greeks, as well as a number of the leading women’ (Acts 17:4). But what about the Holy Spirit pouring words through that quill of a man? Ah, now: He pictured us all. “✮ (new thought)”
How are you impacted by the knowledge that the Holy Spirit had you in mind as the Scripture was penned?
“It is a new thought to me. It warms and swells my heart. I feel blessed. (Thank you Holy Spirit. And thank you Beth, for pointing it out to me.)”
You have a place here – a purpose unique and substantial, not merely some spiritual reality, floating like a fleck in the air.
This is your journey to the shore of Thessalonica, so write your personal signature (use your whole name) and a slice of your biography as you’d introduce yourself here in this sand.
“Hello, I am Rachel Jo Sanders Larson. I was born in Macomb IL, an only child of two art professors. I majored and graduated in math and computer science at IWU. There, I met and married Randy. We have one son, Daniel (22). Randy grew up at DPBC and I married into it. I am a Sparks leader, nursery worker, chair tidier and VBS worker. In theory, I’m still a part-time dog walker.”
If you know what your given name means, share it here. If you don’t know what it means, consider doing some research and adding it.
“Rachel is Hebrew for a female lamb or a baby ewe
“Jo is Scottish for love
“Sanders is (according to my dad) from Alexander the Great – his soldiers
“Larson is Swedish from some ancestor of Ralph’s who was a son of someone named Lars.”
How would you describe your present circumstances?
“At present, I feel a little guilty for not having a job, but I kind of feel I do because my parents are 88 and 85 and really appreciate me visiting one week a month on average to help out a bit. When I’m home, however, I need to improve my work habits and my sleep habits and play less. I am a procrastinating messy hoarder, and I need to reclaim our living room and kitchen to be visitor-friendly.”
Dearest Rachel –
Well, now that the last book has run out of your responses, I’ve dug up this one, which is barely a decade old (not only do you mention Daniel’s age, but on the inside cover of the book, you mention that you began this in 2016). Indeed, I note your mention of your parents’ age, and realize this is just before everything begins to come to… not a close (except in hindsight), but the arc of life begins to bend irrevocably. Your dad would pass barely a year from this point, and that week-each-month would become more intense, as you shepherded your mom into her final years. And just when those traumas were behind you, and you gave me permission to rest, the world shut down, and then… you had to leave.
I don’t think this was the last such study you did – I’m pretty sure this was a regular thing for you every year right up until the pandemic – but it was getting near to the end. There was a lot of chaos that broke out, first in your life and then in the world, from this point on. And after all, you’ve been gone for half of the intervening decade that has passed since.
This one has much less in the way of specific spaces for answering as the last book (as you might guess, I’d grown a bit accustomed to its regularity); although it would seem that its very repetitive nature may have reduced your ability to go into detail with your responses. That, or it was long enough ago that you hadn’t truly found your voice, like you had here. Here, you have plenty to say about yourself and your circumstances; things that I’ve known for a long time, but haven’t heard (or rather, seen from your pen) in a rather long time.
As it is, this is an introduction of the subject matter and yourself; it’s very little that I (and those who’ve been reading over your shoulder regularly) don’t know about you, but perhaps needed a reminder of. For all that things had yet to get crazy-busy, you were still conscious of the fact that you were one of the few of your number who didn’t work for a living, and felt slightly guilty about, even as you acknowledged the benefits it provided to attend to your parents. And speaking of the benefits of life, you were celebrating the fact that the church we belonged to was starting to grow, harvesting people of all walks of life. I’d like to think that you’d be pleased that this hasn’t abated, but I wish you’d have been around (for obvious reasons) to see more of it from on the ground.
There’s a lot to go through in the coming sessions, but for the moment, I think I’ll leave things at this. Apart from the realization that you were just being made aware of how the Spirit had each of us in mind when Paul was writing some two thousand years ago (and presumably visualizing the people he’d met in Thessalonica personally), this is just a matter of getting started in the material; there’s so much more to go into as things go on. So I will leave that for subsequent Sundays. Until then, keep an eye on us, and wish us well, honey.
Letters to Rachel 