2023-11-02 A Meditation on an Urgent Hour

“15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Co 1:15–22 ESV)

“18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. 20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. 24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.” (1 Jn 2:18–25 ESV)

Pleading for just one more hour, we are called each day and this day to live as though face-to-face with the judgment of war. We are called to make the most of each hour, yet apart from self-imposed rigidities, fasts and observances, it is a mopish attitude we sometimes have towards shaping up and concentrating. On war. On spiritual battle. On the dogs of war that will somehow judge each of us, not by who lives or dies, not even by who seems to be the victor, but by the existence of alternative, the reality of opposition, the fruit of a pressure-cooker.

Each hour valued now, we likewise know the urgent, immediate, radically “other” testimony: that in this moment we are now Saved. We have taken upon ourselves Faith, faith in Another, faith in that strange way we are called at once and immediately, upon realizing our sins. Upon realizing our dependency. Upon genuine apology, or a genuine meekness, a modesty, towards approaching holy things, holy ideas and holy signatures, holy relics.

Because it is a breaking point, a breakwater, a leading edge, nay, a bleeding edge, that shuffles and divides, hastening some unto gifted Salvation, and others unto paranoia, complex and inchoate thoughts, inner judgment, the self judging the self unworthy of salvation. Yet not us: we have that Religiously-imbued Answer. Upon encountering a situation that up-ends, that makes topsy-turvy, we have something early and effective, an embrace, a self-sacrifice of a teacher or parent, or just an untold sourced sense of Salvation. We belong. We are saved. We know God’s deep breathing and Word for us: come home, my son, my daughter. All this through Him who strengthens us. All this because we emerge from the head-trip, the experiment, the obsession about “just one more hour” the stronger, and no works-righteous fools, but those who found Salvation in a moment, not at the end of a litany of works. We were, it turns out, already ready: to speak without planning; to pray without ceasing; to bless, heal, lift up, cheer without counting. And this cheer… this cheer is the product of harrowing times, whether personally harrowing, or corporately, nationalistically, harrowing. Such harrowing times make the radical “other” into our shell-shocked but pensive, blighted and beleaguered yet sublime, war-torn yet with righteous embrace. Embrace, we do, unto others, unto our own fittedness when all of a sudden that hour is upon us, and we, we were prepped by a lifetime of experiences, a dozen adult years or three dozen, to hear and to react, to bless and to coalesce, around a brotherhood and sisterhood, around a nervous concern now calm and healed. Salvation is there for those who hearken to the Call.