2023-10-01 A Meditation on Fighting Proud
“11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Mt 5:11–12 ESV)
Fighting proud, clarion call to draw near: things forgotten, of a time closer and more pacific, pacified near to a thought bubble, a token of submission accepted, a token of prayer honored, a token of affinity made good on. It behooves us to have a new modality called Prayer. It serves us to have a new angle called Guile. It makes us up to have a new scope called Theoretical. We are theoretical regarding centering and service: it is a notion and a gift of prayer, to draw on a new angle and a basic decency of lives lived together. Because we honor the brotherhood. Because we light up the fraternity and sorority. Because we rattle the gates of hell with a cozier dwelling place, a wondrous discovery that prayer and intentionality are rewarded by a near Spirit. By a hope-filled maternity and fatherhood served out just for us, who this day are submitted yes, but are joyous all the more to have Found. What was lost. What was leaving us beggars on the periphery. What was excluding us from any avenue simply to speak our words of cautious prayer and unity. We no longer serve angst, but the horizons light and the far reaches glow. We are unapologetically Christian.
Such and more than words is what we fight for, frazzled, peripheral, angular and cautious at times, at prayer we are victory and overcoming of all that tries and tempts and excludes. We found the way to throw out the bathwater without throwing out the babe. A way to honor the separate realms of thought, that reflect in a mirror a similar disposition… towards Christ, towards Peace, towards confraternity.
If it isn’t already plain, we were second class citizens. Because we soldier. Because we light up the airwaves with radical notions: the Christian, truly understood, is easily called “immoral”. This is no factual assessment of their character, but a product of a culture, a mind, that doesn’t understand Grace. Grace appalls and lends to paranoid conclusions, imagined sexualizings and indulgences, prim and self-righteous denunciations.
No, we are not those immoral but rather those tried and soldiering through a minefield few emerge from quite together. But we are together, no longer maimed. We are fellowship and brother or sisterhood. We love the brother or the sister who is easily degraded in our eyes. We are attentive to our own ability to lambast and call “immoral”. Something of love is always labeled excessive and immoral. So to the battle lines and to the scope, in our vision is a New Fold of sheep, a New Religion past that of our forebearers. We have this treasure in jars of clay, that we may speak with confidence into a dubious or sedated ancestry. We have this token that we may rightly labor, fighting because we personally are inspired and have had experience. Of Christ. Of Jesus’ love. Of that “immoral” Man who went to our Cross for us. Whilst we looked for quieter rebellion, less obtuse and less committed. Disbelieving His remarks on what trials would come. Disbelieving that the ear we are speaking into may just have the power to release the captives and bless so many, if only we were certain and assured in our testimony. So for this we try, and endeavor, and suit up.