Jennifer Blacklock

“Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands.”

1 Thessalonians 4:11

When there are unspeakable injustices or conspiracies, when anxiety starts to rage within me over things that are completely out of my control and out of my understanding, things “out there” that I learn about or hear about (often from news or social media), I can only come back to this verse. I can only come to Jesus. To His way. His presence. His story. My salvation that He bought for me. This slow and small advice among a grand scheme of good and evil and hell and eternity and conspiracies and redemption- make it your goal to lead a quiet life. Work with your hands. Mind your business. 

What’s my business today?

Figuring out all the evils taking place behind the scenes? The ways billionaires and natural disasters and celebrities and human trafficking and viruses and weather and AI are connected?

No.

What is my business today?

Oh yeah, changing a diaper. Milking the goat. Hugging each of my kids as they get up and sleepily crawl onto the couch. Reading the Bible. Kissing my husband. Preparing meals. Laughing at adolescent jokes. Tickling toddlers. Listening to piano being learned by eager little fingers. Drinking tea. Walking outside. Writing or reading a little. Dishes. Laundry. Assigning chores. Assigning schoolwork. Adding a log to the fire. Bringing more logs in and stacking them near the wood stove.

I have business. And I’m to be busy about it. This is no one else’s work; there are lots of other Christians about lots of other business today. But we each have what God has called us to steward, we each have our own “pieces of gold” that look a little different from our neighbor’s, and we are to mind our business. To be mindful of our business (which is actually His business).

As long as this world endures, there will be corruption. There will be oppressors and oppressed and powerful billionaires and “nobody’s” and disasters.

This isn’t complacency- God calls all His people to lives that care for the oppressed in some way; we’re not to just sit by uncaring, watching injustice unfold when we have some capability to help. But it is acceptance, and peace, and not anxiety. It is trust in His sovereignty and His plans. He will not allow the wicked to prosper. He will repay, justly. 

Scrolling on your computer or phone, consuming more knowledge (not to be confused with wisdom) than any human was ever meant to, getting fat with information by consuming and consuming and consuming, eating news, eating media, eating opinions, growing anxious for the sake of “keeping up”… 

Is that stewardship?

A quiet life in which we work with our hands and are mindful of our own business… how about that for a resolution?

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” Matthew 6:34