2022-12-31 A Meditation on Eager But Patient
“In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one;” (Eph 6:16 ESV)
The soldier at the ready, living into the service, all systems go, is met with very real spiritual warfare. This includes sudden injury to the soul, the ways that our bravest selves can be hurt because it didn’t dawn on us to run down a checklist of internal and external concerns. Whom are we concerned for? What are we reiterating to ourselves? Is there healthy anxious endeavor to help someone “out there”? For whom do we pray?
The soldier only knows this, that his or her bounty is also a shield and reflecting pane against which all flaming darts of the evil one do bounce. And by and large, the soldier in his or her uniform, buffed up, shined, at the ready, is so immune to so much. First battles are already won. But also the soldier takes this victorious boon and desires to go to work. He or she desires to labor into the moment, expending such spiritual wealth immediately to the least and to the lost. He is no longer eager for war, even though he or she has gone through all the preparations. Even though it seems the only way logically to make sense of all the trials and training.
“But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”” (Ro 10:21). The soldier never forgets that her or his forward position and spiritual wealth, stands in stark contrast to many seekers out there. Many are spiritually poor. Many are yearning for a home base, and it might be us and only us who are ready and able to provide it. Via a healthsome greeting. Via a prayer spoken. Via a personal testimony. Via a walk together. So we allow for a prayer life that keeps us yearning. That keeps us humble. That keeps us identifying with the “other half” of life “out there”. For some this naturally becomes prayer for the poor. For others it is their former comrades in arms, that is, comrades in indulgent lives, near to excess, mentionable only because of the strong bonds of peace that were in strange indulgent fashion therein forged.
Who is on your heart this day? Many who formerly were enemies are now supplicants. We are not exultant. We forgive and accept the apologetic smile of a one-time enemy combatant. Who was an enemy of the Cross. Who walked as an enemy to discipline and moral code. Who trifled around with enmity towards us. All that we can indeed forgive. But pride gets involved. Still, our personal submission, the spick and span presentation, the submitted discipline, reassures and invites: like that sage moment of personal daydream or prayer, like that recollection of a former time in life, the confidence imbued by the recollection, by the vision, does there immediately answer our more pressing concerns: what should be done in such-and-such scenario? Whom should I be writing to? Where am I doubting, and—now inspired—ready and eager to move forward with the plan? Obvious, that plan has become (even though the vision that prompted this revisiting was on a different plane altogether). A given, it is decreed. So our “Gospel” in this regard is that creed and insistence itself cannot save; that we adhere to a living faith, that spells reminders and insights into our pregnant, eager, waiting mind.