2022-09-24 A Meditation on Reflection

2022-09-24 A Meditation on Reflection

“for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” (2 Co 8:2 ESV)

This day, let us be couched in our obedience. Let us sincerely take the time to be wowed and grateful for our own guidance in days past, through simple trials and temptations. Let us cease to be simply looking forward, but note accomplishment and attainment of recent times. Let us take the trouble to nurture our own souls and to create a clean slate from which to venture forth. For we are no longer in love with the present world; we no longer fault ourselves mercilessly, as though that might bring a greater reward; we are A-okay just being and just basking.

For a moment. Until the spirit in Man catches up with the bored or extravagant thoughts. In this light we are saved and that without compunction. God can work with the hobbled, but all the more so with the one redeemed and fully healed. God has moreover given us this message as somehow a simplified Cause, a missionary outreach, a talking point for us as citizens of the world. Somehow, all ideals for us, not out of laziness but out of revealed truth, are summed up in that gentle plea to each whom we meet, to be reconciled unto the Lord and to know Jesus.

As broad citizens of this life, of this world, we believe Progress derives from Mission. Christian outlay promises no overarching demand or authorship, overlords and oppressors, but that missionary’s sincere belief that somehow the witness of Love propagates and percolates. Somehow, when we are equals one to another in our prone posture before the Lord, we can get down to business. Each is welcome here. Each worships together. Each is brother and sister to those same souls she or he works with in their day job throughout the week. So we wear this heart on our sleeve, and give thanks.

We give thanks for those pangs that intrude upon our stasis and rest, pangs reminding us of original sin and all that we have been saved from. We have been saved from merciless, endless, thoroughgoing restive thoughts, infamy, addiction, self-loathing, self-doubt. We glimpse all that the ill spirit wishes to return us unto, and give thanks: no shame in being peace and law-abiding, for our faith is not that of a pundit for Law and Order, but obtains such holiness indirectly, as a consequence of a love life, a passion for, a desire to behold, God in the halls of pure sin. We find God in the unkempt soul or household. We find God in our own bouts of indulgence or of uptight straitjackets of our own creation. We know the Lord in His people, not in His law-abiding matter-of-fact outcome, but in the Love that brought us there. We are one of the gang and integrated because this passion, as opposed to this uptight nagging, is witnessed in us. Jesus approaches us via a friend, and puts no imposition on us. Jesus rewards our mild quietude with compliments. Jesus nurses us, whether we ask for it or not, and does so in pure and holy avenues. Jesus is aware of risk-reward, how we dare to say positive things in part because we follow blueprint and example of those who have surrendered prior to us.

Surrendered to a missiological spirit, on the cusp, life itself calling to us this day, to boast that we overcame a thought of self-harm or self-frustration. We were frustrated by life in its inane routines and sudden emptinesses, but instead of a cry-fest we asked for prayer. We asked, not because prayer will patch up the hurt immediately, but because prayer works, on some level, on some plane, without attention-grabbing. It is our peace and our wholeness, reminding us and each other of our successes of recent times. It is our way forward, and nurture to a hurting world.