“As you know how we exhorted, and comforted,
and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children”
– 1 Thessalonians 2:11 –
With the faithfulness of an administrator, Paul knows that the message is God’s property. It doesn’t belong to him, it has been entrusted to him on loan. That is why he defends, protects, and makes proper use of it. It is not money to guard or a treasure to hide, it is necessary to invest the capital, to produce, and to make it grow.
Paul knows he does not own it; he is an administrator. He knows he is accountable. They treated him as a mercenary and thought he wanted to make money from that message, but he is certain before God and men to be a faithful administrator of all of God’s message.
Paul was a spiritual father to the believers and a good father cares, sustains, and exemplifies. Paul lived a holy life, righteous, integrated, irrepressible, always close to people. He exhorted, encouraged, and comforted. Spiritual childeren need an example to follow rather than a dissertation to listen to.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:7, Paul says that he had tenderness for the people and cared for them just as a mother does her children. Paul did not leave them in care of others. The same one who preached to them continued to pray for them, and now writes to them, visits them, and devotes his time and energy. He was loving, patient, and persevering.
This is a story of a mother that was a fighter. She left Italy at the age of fourteen, escaping war, and made her way in life, without any studies, without knowing the language, but knowing God. At the factory where she worked, the would give her cookies at lunchtime. Instead of eating them, she brought them home for her children. Her children have seen her work even helping her husband building their house.
Now, let’s dwell on the following. She would take her eldest son by the hand every day to his school, that was about seven blocks from their home. She did it until one day when she helped her son cross the street, placed him on the sidewalk that went straight to school, and with no other streets to cross, she said: “Go ahead on your own. I’ll be watching.”
And so it went. The child walked on his own knowing that he was doing so under the watchful eye of his mother. Every time the kid turned his head, there she was, accompanying him with her gaze…
With the faithfulness of an administrator,
the protection of a father, and the love of a mother,
let us walk to eternity under the watchful eye of God.