2024-02-06 A Meditation on Heart All In

“Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. 27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.” (Phil 1:27-30 ESV)

To put one’s heart into a matter is somehow both to labor and to distract with rest; it is to revise and form yet to point at day’s end to another. We speak sparingly and hopefully, that to cope with and realize Man’s plight in this life, is to bloom sympathetic, to give birth to Care, to see cold reality at day’s end yet an end to the lonesome strife.

We are not lonesome because all tomorrow’s parties are the startled resolve that today’s labors will not earn us the prize. Why not party? Why not, indeed, if it is the fruit of conscious rejection of the sad rat race. Today’s labors will not suffice to answer life’s deeper questions. Today’s labors draw forth a reality not in denial but also one that taps into a deeper will to live and a deeper professional pride in our spiritual get-up. Today’s labors remember blank zero status, the end of the tether, the rope giving out, and we… we forlorn, left to our lonesome, a determined sort of sot we are but also clamoring after some kind of Promise. We need some kind of Authority. We need some sort of Healing: too humbling is the mad prancing dare-devil antics.

Yes, we risked much to do our dance, but also with a Hope, no denial of this life but a Hope positive, transformative… only we do not wait upon a transformation, rather dwell near to others who, through life choice and matter of fact diligence, do bumble along in some manner of peace with their fellow Man.

For that peace is no guarantee but rather mystical Reality, the ways in some cases we leave each other be. Yet too the clamoring hope, the nervous prayer request, the lauded and honored personal Presence suddenly becalmed like a ship without wind; we labor and find laud and honor of a sort that far from encouraging us, suddenly leaves us with a startled sense of being hopeless.

Teaming up, all life a kaleidoscope, strange Peace and Fruitful walk in all strange manner of vocation. Why stress oneself? Because it is a waking dream of a responsibility and duty a little more cognisant, coherent, envisioned, and writ large. Yet too the strange ways we allow ourselves to be measured with false yardstick; we didn’t need go that route, yet go it we did. The strange ways we still remember, yearning bleary-eyed hopeless or rather calm. In calm we have hope. In patience we remember loved ones. In rest we thrive.

Therefore what sort of people do we see ourselves as? Do we see ourselves victorious in life or always a couple steps short of the prize? Do we see ourselves walking in tandem with the good set, or always life on the perimeter? What accolades do we allow ourselves? What are we going to be found about, what is our business, when the Master returns? Why do we invent hardships for ourselves?

Thanks be to God that work and labor and rest all are His special gift to us, no judgment but rather indulging of our more basic strivings and hopes. He sees us hope in one direction or another, and blesses it. He doesn’t ask of us anything burdensome, except to cope with that existential terror on the flipside of any stark decision. Any progress envisioned. Any abandonment unto head-down labors under the sun. We labor, and that without claiming our labors have the power to save. We labor without forgetting that alter-vision of a calmed demeanor, a peace outlook, a patient reminder. That all is coming together in God’s time not ours. Rather, that we divine the need for His love in our less coherent hours, in our jumbled fears and longings, in our time in prayer, in that deep resolve to be His people, to be the Good Sort of man, of woman, to have a pluck beyond and despite the hardships. This is the sort of people we in fact now are, as His flock. It is a lesson we never forget, to what and where we are allegiant. It is no shame in the fruitful walk, no fear of the peace and prosperous career, no end to the deep affection for our fellow man and woman but also a reality-stricken awareness that no person can carry us quite; we need a Person Divine, and to hope against hope that we see Him in our peer and friend and lover. In all things respectful of what duty has taught, what pain has seared into our soul, what longing has brushed us up against the firm decision to carry on.