2023-08-09 A Meditation on Bodily Discipline and Spiritual Maturity

“19 I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. 20 For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. 21 For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. 22 But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. 23 I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, 24 and I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also.” (Php 2:19–24 ESV)

We talk ourselves to a plateau. We discover in ourselves a receptivity to Gospel truth. We pray ourselves to a better perch. We begin, hesitant, and end effusive. Such is the prayer walk, the mosaic of insight, the labyrinth of intentionality. Intended to testify, intended to self-give, intended to dwell here, where we are peace and joy and life in believing.

Perhaps the fruit of discipline, perhaps the fruit of Gift: to meditate is to ask quietly yet persistently for some resolution to the utterly ruinous thoughts that intrude. In a former time meaning was structured around discipline and bodily training. But the free gift is not like the habits and those joyous exercises (1 Tim 4:8). The free gift is ours for the asking after a Jacob-like wrestling with God. The free gift is ours when intrusive thoughts and demands do cause us to careen in and out of responsible behavior. Where is that Gospel? What have I lost? Am I a responsible carrier of Gospel-truth? And if so, is it because of my adherence to the law, or is it a Gift?

Today our discipline is an appeal unto the Most High, “Gift us!”. Under the Law we languish, newly exasperated by what habitual thoughts, intrusive demands, careless indulgences do lavish widely, deeply, materially upon us. We reflect, that Man is a sinful being, who glimpses what compromises today tempt away from the good breeding and upbringing, and do we care? Do we care that we are tempted and give in? Do we care that we have a mean streak, or a discovered selfishness?

Parenting reserves a certain place and caution for the deepest instruction, “Son, I am glad you turned out so caring”; “Daughter, I am glad you are so responsible”. Parenting calls each of us, when we are ready, to translate our panicky discovery—the discovery that our parents, too, and our teachers, too, are only human—into immediate words of gratitude or of caring Grace. We need not regret the limits of their parenting insights, and the beginning of our own self-discovery and career.

In other words, the soul and soldier who is saved, is so by a real exercise in asking, a real endeavor in petitioning. We long for a further dispensation of Gospel truth. We seek answers, early in the morning and throughout the meditative day. Our self-critical “eye in the sky”, that eye that monitors our own status, is frustrated at times by our paucity of words, or joyous at times at our acceptance at the hands of brothers, sisters, and peers, yet the ability to love ourselves comes from above, as a gift, no paycheck for our spiritual outlay, but rather a culmination of so many years when, indeed, we did the bodily training (somehow that was our prayer life?), or did the philosophizing (somehow, that was our conscientiousness?), or did the meditation (somehow, that was our Godly assurance of being Loved?). We were loved, and dealt squarely with all spirits tempting us to hate; rather, the flipside, being utterly consumed with those spirits in our lives who have wished good for us, who have seen in us a fine specimen of godly Creation, and have loved.

So we mirror what opinions are cast our way, and wake up today to a discipline, a Gift, a self-giving spirit, whom we cannot in any wise offend. Who is there for the long-haul. Who sees in us not the rejectamenta nor the pathetic, but untold Gift and possibility, a genuine attraction, acceptance in ways that make us modest: the mind is good; the soul is, I would say, saved. So we are attractive in what can only be observed in time and duration, the spellbinding fruits of a mind and soul and body contrite, subservient, arising, ascertaining Truth.

After all, that bodily training was a kind of Gospel: none of us is quite capable of the requisite self-love, unless we have something to point to, some discipline or some prayer, some contribution, even, from our cautious and limited frame. Our limitless knowledge finally is convincing, after the day’s labors. Our acceptance, costing nothing, is believed after we’ve enlisted and put our very lives on the line for the peace of the wonderful community. All this, we receive, but do labor to prove it to a skeptical mind. And in the timeless weariness, we begin for once to accept the Free Gift. We are owners and masters of a fruit not given to all people equally, the fruit of decisions made, and that single person—us—in the community makes a plethora of blessedness towards others who languish. Such is our capitalizing, our ability to make a buck, to turn each endeavor to Gold. Our gold is our joy and peace in communicating with a skeptical populace. Our gold is our testimony: the free gift was dancing partner to the Law that disciplined and labored under heavy burdens.