2023-01-22 A Meditation on Christ-Thinking

“Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” (Heb 11:12 ESV)

Jesus on the Cross represented a major victory of Christ-thinking. Jesus was called to hold some things as His own personal burden, though we naturally wish to give things away and each of us likes living in community. So the next gen analysis that the good soldier is making, always seems to verge towards the mysterious. Mystical, mysterious, rarely alighted upon in our—the soldiers’—routine thinking, is that next gen understanding. Yes, here are the factors on the bargaining table. Yes, your life is not spent in vain. Yes, you are seen as a phenomenon, as God’s own creation, as actor at the table, as creative and innovative contributor. Even God on High gives assignments to these His creatures. Even God on High has battles, and we are to see plainly why certain maneuvers are on hold… endlessly on hold; why certain copacetic peace is more a mental notion than anything today played out; why the good gift may simply hearken back to we ourselves: it is we who step into that role as Chosen, as Anointed, as Individual, as Cross-bearer.

So the analyst, the intelligence officer that every soldier is called winsomely to be, knows of a higher thought that is both utilizing the soldier’s sacrifice, and is treasuring this same soldier’s capacity for thought and human flourishing. Flourishing endeavors, security systems by way simply of gauging and assessing by instinct what and whom to trust, with what matters to identify our own selves, how we see life through a Cross lens, is contagious; we believe in mind-reading of a sort, insofar as something of our speech is revealing of deep thoughts and understandings.

Those understandings can, in this mortal and brief life, be life and sustenance. They can be devoid—largely, always—of the sins of lust or anything that warps and distracts. We see this in our daily routines, that any hunger we grab by the horns and wrestle to a caged place. We see the delight in the success of our peers and our friends and our family members; at times we even flirt with a theology less cynical, a theology of good things. But then we see all that we’ve turned a temporary blind eye to, the political impasses, the railing against our person from the congregation at large, the strange—if we’re honest—affects of a hateful populace, that somehow today we’ve dreamt larger than. We’ve dreamt Forward and Progress. We’ve dreamt wishful thoughts, knowing God on High values us ourselves, no need to pass the buck just yet, but still we wonder after those deep analyzed postures, the simple reasoning, the fact of trust systems and security systems, of wisdom and of militant pragmatics. Only thus far and such-and-so can we embellish the lives of these our cared for ones and our loved ones. Only thus far can we spread the wealth, because today we believe in our own individualized Anointing, like Christ, to take whatever others might have done in our place, those who have gone before us, and to take that mantle on ourselves. To do right, to flourish, to bless and sustain all those for whom better things are around the corner.