2023-05-24 A Meditation on Churches

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’” (Re 2:7 ESV)

Churches come, churches go; one hopes the Word has a slightly longer staying power. One hopes the Word is sheltered, bivvied in place, cause and concern of the prayer warrior and soldier of New Times. Testing Times. Broad Avenue for discovery. The churches they come and they go, yet loyalty to some One True Church meets the day as a spirit determined and focused: we shall persevere.

Nor is it an easy thing to dismiss with the embalmed fruits of generations of saints, to soldier out on a lark and a prayer, on wings and a hope, unto that certainty: Word of God is capable and is strong, bulletproof to dictate patience through suffering, boldness through oppression, striving through discouragement. Such Word is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword (Heb 4:12).

The Word is in our midst, is echoed in the halls and grottoes of the soldier’s revelry or social time. The Word is properly mournful, not easily saying goodbye to said churches which come and go. The Word is on an advance scouting mission, knowing this: that today’s experiments and formulae tomorrow will spell war and many making ultimate sacrifices. Already, such times are upon us. Already, the reactionary disgruntled opposition is inventing ways to throw a wrench in the cogs, to maintain a repose of mammon, of material wealth, that makes it all that much more convicting when those who have little, those who serve, those whose gladness is in the day’s wages not in mammon nor in accumulation, do convict and cause a wealthier set to lunge this way and that.

Perhaps. Perhaps, we can hypothesize whilst staying true to our Gospel assurance, that Word that directly states opposition will come. That directly states, these things too shall pass. That directly states we are on Divine Mission to find life by losing it. To find personal meaning by external submission. To submit to the Spirit in our midst, in the soldier’s haunt and by-and-by, a Spirit mutual, together, begging off when acknowledged or praised: anyone in our place would have done the same.