2022-12-15 A Meditation on Mixed Circumstance

“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.” (2 Co 12:7 ESV)

People assume either that we’re too far gone and sinful, or that because of our rank and service we automatically receive blessing and quietness of disposition. This could not be further from the truth. Sure, fatigues and weapon, night vision and rucksack, are carried by people with every potential to Believe, but they in and of themselves do not save themselves. To be saved, a woman or a man must wrestle daily with who they are, uniformed or not. They must wrestle daily with doubt and confusion, with temptations and with this admirable way that the Lord teaches us in situ, whilst we work, already in the service and already fighting.

We are thus educated on-the-fly. While our minds try to make everything logical and patterned after great problem-solution pairings, in fact there is more call to fight, and more call to repent, than we imagined. We are like those nude and streaking: we need to be clothed with the Gospel, a Gospel that changes our wild ramblings and soul-baring tell-alls, into some plain expose of “Here, Exhibit One: man, the sinner!”.

There is thus some salvation by virtue of us not being too slick and professional about this whole “Christian” thing, we might hope. There is some quality of circumstance, near church friends, that brings us to mind of our sinful nature. There is ample occasion to repent, and to meet Christian with Christian, even though each has their own stripes: “Oh, I know who you were from growing up in community… I know which person was you!”.

So it is uncomfortable for the one passing easy judgment this way or that, to reckon with Man the sinner. It is uncomfortable when our posh presentation and uniformed assembly is in itself seen as salvific; when they do not see each adherent of the Gospel as one badly wounded, and yet because of this wound, this thorn, as ones stronger and unbreakable. They have seen parable upon parable upon parable play out, in training, in the war, in spiritual counterpoint to this visage once known as familiar friend. And they are still not by all that service saved. They still need all those good parables, of Christian life being a fight, of wearing the full uniform of the saint, of forgiving the impossible demands levied their way, and coming alongside to others of modest rank, no climb to befriend the admiral but simple faith in pockets of productive spiritual work.

Thus pockets work both wonders, unplanned and not peered in upon as of yet by the God and Father of all, and also pockets are a sad fact of a life wherein not all is some perfect dance unto the end. People are in eddies and whirlpools. People, previously monitored closely and challenged, are letting the years go by without accomplishing what, with a little counsel and encouragement they might have salvaged. So life is sadly imperfect, yet it also is perfect in a Kingdom Now sense: because God does in fact have a dance planned out, it just is greater and more patient, and more all-encompassing than anything we can imagine. So even our times of infamy—the drink, the drug, the sleeping around—are redeemed: what a good party we threw, if only we could subtract out the drinking and the drug. What a good relationship we had, if only we could better honor the estate of marriage as being our proper end.