2023-11-03 A Meditation on a Trust Fall
“11 And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.” Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.” (Ac 13:11 ESV)
No longer fearing for that day, the Christian is in a jumble it seems always, hated by some subconscious reflex in the frame occupied by the enemy, which enemy takes over souls and speaks out of laggard spirits of Man. Principled, the Christian is no longer fearing for the denouement, the day of battle waged, the “I hate you!” ameliorated, through that principle and that stand. Uptight, yet loving, the stalk through messy environs, we fear not to tread where unseemly spirits have gone before. The Christian is moral and principled vis-a-vis a morality called Grace, called Gospel, called developed and wise regarding the Law.
To regard the Law is to fight no binary war of this-or-that stand, but rather with eagle eyes to see from a perch the perversion and the morass, the bleating goats and hate-filled reactivity. To show some comeuppance of Grace is to breathe fresh oxygen, amidst a war vivid outside the Man and vivid inside his heart.
Because we envision all enemies as being one enemy, both the voices within and the reality of voices outside the mortal individual’s frame. If we can resist the temptation to be cheered solely by our accomplishments, instead taking upon our head and heart and mind the cheer of being Loved, then we can defeat a nefarious enemy. We face blocks, needing to pray ourselves into a vivid dichotomy called Law and Gospel. Yet what we have to say we Believe: is greater and already ready, to combat the illness without and within. We need not fuss and pontificate and wait; the storyline is ours to own this day, that Christ in Jesus was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us. And we are first to sign up on those terms, knowing our Gospel will immediately meet with the goat of objection, of pernicious accusation, of dismissal.
No, we believe that Gospel is the ticket to a lawful existence. We are so moral as no longer to fear to be called immoral. Of course we want a lawful existence. Of course we want to coach one another, and in gladsome mindset to enumerate what-all our law is, our law of the day, a law updated perhaps or at least made immediate and relevant; knowing that precisely in acknowledging a failure, a failed test, a shortcoming, in this acknowledgment we can step out of the legalist’s suit and in our natural elements see clarion sights and vivid awareness: who and what is saved? Whom and to what end are we laboring after? Can we literally prescribe something—grace—that doesn’t logically lead to better law-abiding? Can we literally welcome the sinner times ten, the one always more faulty than the rest of us? Can we do the unfair assessment that makes all equal under the postponed judgment? That is, that each of us is equally in need of Jesus’ patient adoption as sons, daughters, and that in Him we begin to covet a certain morality, though always taken back by our own inner flailing soul to our need for mercy? For, we can only do so much by way of fixing ourselves up; the ecstasy, the arrival, the denouement, the stasis found, is in utterly determined desire to love us: God’s desire, and Man’s, His hope and His coming together. See how we are elevated and ecstatic by this carrot dangling before us, which carrot appeals to our reason whilst our soul is cautiously, boldly, following the Good Path that the treat represents. No longer afraid to follow after pleasantries, the seasons of togetherness and simple outcomes, are seasons that beguile us, leading us, wandering us now guided, unto a path called Trust, called Faith, called You Lead.