2023-08-25 A Meditation on Being There

“12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.” (2 Co 1:12–14 ESV)

Being there, light speed is righteous speed, the buoyancy of the Man, of the Woman, caught up in a comet’s tail, effusive, prolific, artisan and divinely blessed. To be escape artist from sin and all that tempts, the doubts, the give-and-take that never should replace All-On, No Compromise, Prayerful Appeal unto Jesus on High to make this hour our victory hour, one of meeting the impossible, naming it, mocking it or dismissing it, holding up a clarion Call and Torch unto the soul located, found, in the zone, and being there.

The soldier has had tutors and parents, teachers and leaders, who by example and word, deed and submission, have shown pattern of ethical God-fearing behavior, the murmured prayer lifted unto the Most High, the faith beyond the pale of superstition, rather, a clean and buoyant faith, pragmatic and honest about what makes a woman or man, the dictation of what sin has done to God’s fine creation, and the appeal for Lord to be by-and-by as we fall asleep, as we face the delight of an early morning alone or in quiet companionship, as we think through the ties that bind and start to make accounting of ourselves that is much more humble: see how we cannot simply be grand and open-minded unless so gifted. We need gift and inspiration to escape the ruts of self-critique and frustrated moans, of a gulf between what the Words promise and what we have in fact accepted. Today, this hour, if you hear His voice, bring all that to the altar. Wash it in the life-blood spilt. Cleanse it in the Call heard: to be a strong people, a noble people, a people “found” and “being there”. Whose strength is in a joust with Satan and evil wherein we praise and laud those martyrs who go before us, the Jesus who died so that we might be marvelous sacrificial lambs ourselves, at His beck and call, yet thereby having returned to us our character and self-hood, our disposition and our romances with life. With those things that shape and intrigue us, the simpler oblong traits, no high-minded pontification but rather a benign fascination with entertainment of an ilk or ribaldry of a stripe.

The soldier therefore is of circumspect self-knowledge, facing a self no longer hardened into obnoxious bravado but rather innately strong because of innate self-awareness, of prayer, of willingness to indulge the loud boasts of a peer, in faith that God’s will and battle shall prevail: for these we do pray. For all, who resist the Making and Creating of patient self-discipline, who honor parents and in turn are imbued, taught, to be moral and honest, to give the nod heavenward at some point perhaps, or the self made available despite tiredness, to listen, to be near, to bless one helplessly talking to themselves about some wrong done or some impossible bind or some inchoate realization of what this life is all about.

So to the ranks and to the stations, knowing heaven is found in foretaste that we might more bravely fight today, and tomorrow, and until the swords are beaten to plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (Isa 2:4) and the weapons are put down for a different kind of path forward, courageous to be subtle now, comforted, joint in project and endeavor, strangely Peace and Calm, unbothered to be resting secure, able now to face who we were and who we now are, not needing the battle cry somehow to make atonement for our odd corruptions. Those corruptions do not mock nor decry the Lord, but form His intense interest in us, caring, subtle and courageous to die for us, hopeful because we are more than an anthill; we are an offshoot of His mind and heart, and He longs for us. He weeps when, hardened and battle-ready, we hate on our fellow man. He emboldens when, attacked and slandered we put up a modicum of first defenses. He strikes when, patient for the harvest time we see evil become evil beyond measure; and we reward, regale, laud and honor so many who have suffered in silence and labored in compromised situations.