2024-01-10 A Meditation on Amazing Potential

“17 But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face,” (1 Thess 2:17 ESV)

Rightly understood, in the hale of fire, it is no mere cinematic invention that one person, man or woman, fights off the mob. One person, male or female, walks on water and stands by principles. One person, in no invented self-interest but in genuine altruism works for the safe passage of the subjects of their visionary dream.

That is, basic religion reminds of mind, habit, posture, being things rarely questioned and deeply sinful… sinful until unimaginable mystery confronts the inner Person with Grace, and thereby weans off the juice, the selfish self-justifying juice, grants rest and repose to readjust, to reacclimate, to question first principles and see for once—thanks to Sabbath keeping of some variety, perhaps—how an interlocutor—an enemy—is seeing life.

Back to the hero of cinematic efficacy, heroic action flick no lie but “truth is stranger than fiction”: Altruism does exist alongside basic love for the labor, desire to be useful, no preening sophisticates but soldiers rightly understood. No effete class-based perch, but something each person discovers to have been gifted them: a place in this social edifice; a rank in this social totem pole; an innocence not self-accomplished but gifted from birth and humble parenting (“I want decent kids, not ambitious kids, not proud kids, but decency to comfort me in my old age…”).

To discover, then, Total Depravity as a Christian thinker’s or soldier’s constant bed of reflection, whilst also the pick-me-up that God don’t make no junk, that genuine altruism (working for others) does occur, and yet no matter, find in that altruism still the sin: the sin of making idols of others, of fixating rather than letting go, of forgetting not to obsess but allow all things in His timing. Hard to say, but altruism is preparatory to Total Depravity: we rejoice to have been on the Expedition called Extraction, called Night of the Chimes, called Sojourn, called Pilgrimage, while also longing that the credit go all towards Him who set these things in motion in His timing, forgiving us our impatient querying through prayer and meditation: we pray, we meditate, we release all unto His guidance and His wisdom.

Strange peculiar lugubrious society is all that stands in the way. We as those alert and called, as those soldier and thinker, spare no time, lend no moment, to exasperation, but see a Real Devil at work and it by no means a given that we will attain unto the best reward. We will not fight down the most things possible, if we don’t take seriously the call to pluck and perseverance and dutiful Rest as a time to free associate and let the mind’s perches come under scrutiny or relaxed revision. Take the breather. Indulge the rest. Admit the nervousness. Accept the points of fact, of artistic observation, of patient self-portrayal and call for a New Day to revise, to heal, to soldier forth so bold now that we first know ourselves sinful losers, and then know ourselves blessed winners because of His artillery and army, His pragmatic foraging and sojourns and expeditions. His sense that the one walking as it were on water is the one staring down a mob, strangely warmed heart and even more strangely composed mind. The illness of mind and body is no victim of a society in denial of its sinful origins, but an invite to fight through the pain and the handicap, grateful today for things we scarcely stopped to acknowledge, life and limb, friend and unity, league and Purpose.

Extraction becomes a parable about that in-situ reality of head lifted heavenward and Jesus—this person’s personal Jesus—being the solo and mean comforter. To find peace now and at the ready, to see that the person Visionary and Called is immediately in need of a few things around here, some miracle water-walking, some blessed hiddenness, some safety in the shadow of His hand, in the cleft of the rock, in neither thoughts too lofty nor complaints too worldly, but occasion and legacy all our own: Him gifted that great gift called Obedience, called Childlike Faith, called Reassurance: it isn’t our “big brother” duty to fix all things, but rather to allow for a Spirit inquisitive and searching to show us how and what is occurring, in a strange mind trip around someone else’s complete oblivion or hurt or handicap. We are strangely teammates and mutually servant-minded, letting basic check-ins speak an unspoken word to each other, just how in fact are you doing, my comrade in arms? How are your days going? What is the meaning of the world we live in? Who, just are we in Christ?