In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he speaks of ‘your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (1 Thess 1:3) Endurance doesn’t always get a good press these days; it has a dour, prosaic sound to it and doesn’t seem very appealing! But the ability to endure, to persevere, to carry on is an invaluable quality, especially when it’s inspired by hope.
Inspiration sounds much more exciting and inviting to us; it reminds us of the artist, the musician, the author. But the Christian life involves combining endurance and inspiration. We can’t just afford to be inspired for a moment; every artist, musician and writer knows that those flashes of inspiration have to be fleshed out in the monotony of practice and the grind of self-discipline. So too our faith has to be lived in both the valleys and the mountain tops, in the everyday and the mundane as well as in the drama of the miraculous. Paul wrote to believers who were facing death and were not quite sure how to reconcile this with the resurrection of Jesus. He reminded them that they had hope beyond the grave, that their grief was no longer the same as it had been. (1 Thess 4-5) God’s grace is there for us in every situation, ‘there on the wedding day, there in the weeping at the graveside’, as Matt Redman says (‘Your Grace Finds Me’). We have hope beyond the grave, and therefore can endure!
