2024-01-27 A Meditation on Ultimate Fears
“4 “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! 5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah 6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!” (Ps 39:4-6 ESV)
11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.” (Gal 1:11-17 ESV)
Ultimately what: disappointment, flat-lined, hopeless? There is in human longing some inclination unto cynicism, some fear that the aura will dispel and the magic will cease, that our heavenly Father will becomes just so much passing explanatory device, so much convenience, so much evolutionary ambition minus the plain reality, a reality of Love, of Persistent Meaning, of so much that beguiles and elevates meager human spirit unto its rightful heights, callings, created status. The fit of concentration disperses but not unto failure, only unto a meditation as to this God and Father, this Son and enabler, this Spirit and protector.
The fit of inspiration we safeguard, we do not compromise, we use to elevate the Expectations Sublime. The backdrop reality, one of looming war or literal skirmishes, the plain feeling that in the end shall be disappointment, mechanistic dryness, lack of patent Love and Endearing Investment: we are endeared upon, invested within, called and brokered in no cynical usurping or mining or belittlement, no utility that we serve alone, but rather God is respectful unto the last days, of our Belonging, our Purpose, our Joy Divine.
God reboots. God asks each day if we can indeed sign our name to the Creed: this much I believe, to this One I lift a prayer, here is my dwelling-place spirit-wise. Stark new thoughts, untold invented newness and Cause du jour, celebre and regifting: our latter days and yesteryears only a pittance compared to just who and to what ends we serve today.
The fear, then, that in the end it was us left holding the buck. It was us who were loitering about what yesterday was the happening spot, only today it is vacated, everyone has gone home; we were electrified by the make-shift fellowship. We were challenged and persistently encouraged by a Happening Contemporary, a Place and Situation alive. Our friends… they have not gone anywhere except to their own forced breaking point, a temporary remove, a holiday or a family gathering. Still, it can become our deepest pattern-matching and expectation, that in the end all shall be “merely” and “only” and “yawning” and “ambition”. Would that we could flex limbs today, not merely plugged in, not merely utilized, but Celebrated, Created, Sent Forth. That the fears of end, and of greed, and of human disservice writ large, all these could be replaced by a straight-to-the-books, straight to the game, straight to the battle drawn. The soldier has found a career in professionally dying, dying to self, lifting each day’s prayer as though our last will and testament, rather, as though it matters not if we see tomorrow, because we’ve said and done what evokes Humanity in ourselves. We have alighted upon a Career, a Fellowship, a Purpose, yes, a War of vulnerable man, man with his or her vulnerable spirit and hopes, now Promised Over unto God’s care and give-and-take. God’s caretaking, God’s Placement in the milieu so holy, because we are used but not cynically milked like a farmer with her or his heifer. We are not simply numbers on a tally sheet, but are allowed room; the neighborhoods form around these human habits and adventures or those; there is no perfect solution, and there is plentiful reason to pray, that the badness go away, that the crime lessen, that the human experiment attain unto its Promise, its early Hope, its utterly failed Investiture. Past investment. Forward-looking potential. All this an occasion to hold both-and, not either-or. We are both honest as to how fallen is the state of the world around us, and no matter we motor along in hope for a brighter day. Both-and, and the beginnings of a Faith, the soldier checking in, the dutiful leader mulling about, the consecrated warrior a modicum of glad hearted peace in believing. We believe that these sons and daughters, consigned unto, sent forth with prayers, unto tomorrow’s war, shall maintain the joy; shall not deny the fellowship nor the Hopeful creed, shall in any event be invested in from Above, forgiven for errors made but no matter: in all things hopeful and joyous and duty-bound.