For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.

– 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20 (ESV)

I am beginning to understand something (not that I have attained to it!).

As we grow in faith, there is a necessary shift in our focus that I believe must take place. And it is a joyous shift! It’s a changing of our focus from inward to outward. I have not attained this yet! But I can see it shouting from Paul’s exclamation above, and I can glimpse it now and then beginning to emerge in me.

“For what is our hope or joy or crown . . . is it not you?” Paul loved the people that he discipled and pastored and evangelized. Absolutely loved them. And you can see in his words above what his hope and joy and crown was. It was them. How far Paul had come from the dazed and fearfully joyous ex-persecuter of the church, blindly sitting and fasting with scales on his eyes, to the man here speaking hope and joy to the Christians of Thessalonica.

It’s the subtle moving from “Lord, thank you for saving me”, to “Lord, thank you for saving them!”

I begin to feel it. I received two emails today from past band members that filled me with joy. I see Christ move in my own children and my hope shines brightly. It’s a better feeling than just knowing the hope inside me. It’s knowing that that same hope is inside them. It’s praying that they will live the life more deeply, worship more freely, and love more recklessly than I. It’s akin to the joyous wish of the Green Lady in C.S. Lewis’ masterful Perelandra: to one day fall at the feet of her children, now grown in their love for God far beyond where she had ever gone.

There’s nothing like it.