Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 106 · April 16
An Ambition to Be Quiet
“And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;”
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Set that beside Paul writing to Thessalonica: And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you. One says shine where people can see it. The other sounds like an instruction to keep your head down, and it is the verse reached for whenever somebody wants Christianity kept private and small.
Deal with the English first, because the whole objection can be built on a word that has changed meaning. Study in 1611 meant to make a thing your aim, to be eager for it. The Greek verb is the one for being ambitious, and modern Bibles print make it your ambition or aspire. Nothing here rests on the word study. The instruction is an ambition, and its object is quietness, which is a stranger thing to want than the objection allows.
Paul is also answering a specific mess. His second letter names it: there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. People in that church had stopped working and were living off others while taking a lively interest in everybody else's affairs. The reason he gives for the correction is entirely about outsiders: That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. Both verses are pointed at the same audience, the people watching. Jesus names the light as good works. Paul spells out what those look like on a Tuesday: your own trade, done properly, your debts paid, your neighbour's business left alone.
The promise attached is worth having exactly as written. Lack of nothing.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 106 is Between His Shoulders (Deuteronomy 33:12).