2023-05-25 A Meditation on Being True
““As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. 18 Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? 19 And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet? 20 “Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, 22 I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep” (Eze 34:17–22 ESV)
To be soldier and True, is to wrestle with the unexpected challenges of success as much as of despair. Somehow, at the apogee and pinnacle, we yet feel on the verge of floundering. Just as success on some meek front should reassure us, we go head-over-heels into depression or fail to forgive ourselves, or lose track of that protective guise called “undeserving”. For, we the undeserving, do well to stay the undeserving, to receive all good things without a sense of entitlement, to find ourselves at the last picked up, outfitted as soldier, careening into a whole world of newfound possibilities, spiritual outlays, wealth, and in all this absolutely no safeguard against despair except for that safeguard called a heart repentant, a heart entrusted, a heart promised over unto Jesus.
Our heart is feeding on something a little more rare, a little more substantial, than the simple measures of success in life: who we have alongside of us, how much in the bank, respectability on the family front or the career front. We feed and thrive on a kind of manna tender and availed unto us from God’s own Son, the manna of His desire to give of His own self and body, soul and inner compass, for us. We therefore can as a rule not a happenchance, be of good cheer. We can relish the occasion to dwell secure, thanks to our home front and those like Him on the front line, to know ourselves likewise frontline to others. We can in short repent of the successes as much as the failures: dear God, we need You rather than our own accolades.
Courage, perseverance, the expectation is that upon reaching a bit of success here or there, all will be motoring along; but rather we find life dishes its worst at us, even amidst success. We rediscover the Preacher’s stock sermon, which one says that life is a squeeze, that life is an impossible bind and horrific states of affairs, untold immorality on one front, and untold competitive frustration on another; yet we pray and believe, True, soldier, and servant: to remember the lean years, that we may all the more receive our promised wealth of the flourishing years, the bountiful years, the astonishment and regret for not being more grateful earlier on, for the good years.
Our immunity is our humility, rather, our gratitude; to give thanks even though horrific judgments come down from high places; to recall a good agent on our behalf, a good attorney, who points out that our sins are sins of imitation, or are justifiable for Jesus Himself addressed the uncouth and discomfited matter. Strange to go by the Book! Strange to go by the Parable! Strange to go by the righteous anger!