2023-07-19 A Meditation on Highs and Lows

“50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Co 15:50–58 ESV)

Focus. Focal points on the horizon. Rediscovering and maintaining allegiance to signposts invisible. But all the noise posits a different time frame, a relaxed alert, less allegiance to a Cause, something doable that won’t cause offense.

For our gospel causes offense, and it is a challenge to maintain the zeal, the missional front, the crusading theme. Yet there we are sharp to salute, and brave to sign up: somehow, left to our own devices, we are beyond forlorn over sins, beyond embarrassed and worse, seeing little avenues for apologies. No matter, our recruitment and our willingness to serve: these things do help to assuage the negative self-image.

For that is all that it is: utter meekness, negative self-image, heads hung low. To surmount is to live high up the majesty road. Yet, we wished to please parent or employer, but only gave them reason for concern. We were aloft and high, wild-eyed with gracious words, and then came crashing down, those signposts subject of a negating dismissal: “It was nothing but vain imaginings”; “The fellowship is ruptured”; “The pain is too great”. We struggle to remember the high plateaus wandered and discussed only a day earlier. Lover and friend in compromised relationship, causes fright and pain. And the realization of how we’ve maligned life and our own prerogative at times, is too much to contemplate.

Yet the service-minded day. To serve is to be useful to someone, if not to the gentler and ephemeral people who do dwell around us. They are gentler than war, yet need our help to protect and to secure. They are ephemeral yet some miniscule experiences with them prevail and last. We will see each other again on the flipside.

So to the Love and to the Fellowship. To the lifestyle rearranged so as to make just us, the two of us, a little more similar. The bishops of the world are not all quite visionary as to the power that Love has to endure and to preach. Head games circulate around us: grumble, grumble, is this a wide-open barn? Let’s get some decency of repentance around here! Let’s not let just any riff-raff through our doors? Let’s give name and deed to the wild dispersed storylines.

And the promise that life is inspired by the little and the few, helps us to wander and to secure: we are products of our actions, made right by our wanderings, engaged and labeled by our Practical Obedience, on the subway, in the crowds, at the gardens and urban benches. We are trying to imbue our early sense of militant soldier with okayness around past errors and okayness with today’s Belonging, Inspiration, New Life, and simple perforated, delimited, seasonal service wrought and leveled. It is seasonal to know many will not make it to old age on this earth, but will know the greater good of life Above. It is seasonal to see us trying to hitch a ride, when instead the first concern is simply prayer of a New Beginnings upon discovery of a new scenario.

Each scenario is cause to celebrate and never gets too far ahead of us; we can dwell in this cocoon, these barracks, this entitled Cause we have grown into to be God’s missionaries and soldiers.