Make It Your Ambition to Be Quiet
"and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."
— 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
Paul puts two words together that do not normally go together. Ambition is what you want people to see. A quiet life is what nobody sees. He was writing to a young church that expected the world to end shortly, and some of them had stopped working because of it. His instruction is the opposite of dramatic: do your job, mind your own affairs, do not become a burden.