2023-05-12 A Meditation on Being Accustomed to the Unworldly

“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. 26 “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 27 You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else. And my people shall never again be put to shame” (Joe 2:25–27 ESV)

Labeled, outfitted, it feels we are an aspect of the overall community, a shade of the status quo, one of the gang, until dawning on the notion of unusual miracle deeds at work in our generation. We are gifted a strange outlay, a phenomenon to behold in wonder, an invite to the oblong rather than to the typically yawn-worthy and circular. We are lashing forth, lancing forward, lunging into our day’s labors, on wings and a prayer.

We were never just the typical citizen. Somehow, if we only had faith and patience to see it, our lives were ruled by the miraculous, by abrupt Presence, Purpose, interventions from On High, and us always trying to shoehorn life’s days into a more understood or explained, visible to the naked eye, routine. That we are merely evolving and seeking personal scraps of food or excellence over our peers. That we have, yes, a few hangups and sins, but by and large we are just like these our neighbors. That we can be explained with sage psychology or, group-wise, sociology.

That flair, that divine Wave, that treading lightly for we are on holy ground: all this is a Revealed kind of truth. It is a Revealed kind of love for the brethren. It is a Revealed belonging, duty, calling, unto making plain the servant’s wondrous life beyond life. As though no matter, we may already have died and this fine morn is our eternity. As though God patiently adopts and tutors us, so as to give each of us Domain Knowledge, expertise, familiarity, aptitude, in something: that we may enter upon an eternal blessed estate, a giftedness, a determination for Spirit to prevail even as we weigh everything down with desperate or lazy explanatory device.

God persists beyond anything we would believe. God gives buoyancy beyond anything we would count upon. God has eternity in mind, so that we need not mourn the years that the wasting disease consumed, the swarming locust ate.