1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Three commands, and each one is impossible if you read it as a description of feeling.

Nobody rejoices always in the emotional sense; nobody prays every waking minute. Read as instructions about mood, these are cruel. Read as instructions about direction, they are something else.

Without ceasing does not mean without interruption. The Greek word was used of a persistent cough — something that recurs, comes back, is never fully gone. Not continuous, but chronic. That is a description almost anyone can recognise and most can manage.

And the third command tells you the range. In everything give thanks. Not for everything, which would require calling a bereavement good. In — inside it, while it is happening. The circumstance is not being praised; something is being located within it.

The last clause covers all three: this is the will of God in Christ Jesus toward you. People spend years trying to determine God's will about a job or a marriage. Paul attaches the phrase to three habits available today, in any circumstance, without further information.

And he is writing to a church that had lost members to persecution and was worried about the dead. The instructions are not offered to people whose lives were going well.