2024-03-02 A Meditation on Faith Beckoning

“4 This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. 3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.” (1 Cor 4:1-5 ESV)

Really trying our hardest to reinvent the wheel, Faith beckons us to something already resolved, a forward leap of humankind, progress, a fait accompli. Indeed it can seem we each have some personal quota of how much grief and nonsense we tolerate, as though it were up to our prerogative and our hard work actually to make sense of affairs. But to the Believer there is a deep experience-laden course, namely, that Christ and His Cross were a fiat that bears up under infinite scrutiny.

Infinitely mining the paradigm and indeed the paradox, that a Man lauded and all-around influential, should be crucified and in large part hated at least by the pundit in the great halls of power. Or those somehow lackey to power, to authority, to a denouement anything but Faith-filled, anything but Hopeful, anything but Resigned. For our resignation is our first step as a humankind reflective, bouncing ideas off of each other, hope-filled, discovery-enthused, remade and cultivated unto higher authorial purposes.

Our resignation is rather a resting sort of busy-ness, knowing there to be only so many hours in the day and yet as iron sharpens iron we respectfully gaze upon our fellow and gal, our woman or our man, as together heirs of this untold Mystery. Together reminded nothing is going to work itself out ‘round here on its own initiative but no, we are both enabled and weary at just what lofty heights we aim for: the lofty heights of to know and to believe, to share and to delve into, to alight upon and to meditate upon. Our thoughts becoming Holy because they live near to a Defeat, near to a bleary-eyed self-questioning and motive-cautionary reality. We are real but not Okay until Spirit does meet Spirit, and change happens, and reminder lights up the heart, and we digress upon a course healthsome and benevolent.

So to the races, and to the Game: we have all these things stored up to delve into and taste the foretaste of, in unity, in communion, in strange reflecting upon the choices of ourselves as seen through the lens of another; in this regard strange mysteries reveal themselves to the Saints, strange Progress (never to be taken for granted or assumed in any depressive haze); we fight over each inch and over each doubtful ideation, to act on the Faith that something New is upon us and something Sufficient has occurred, and something Healthsome, Vital, Cause for Living, is now ours to own and to share. So we weary of apologies and launch in to decisive resolve, decisive steps in a chosen inimical to some direction; we have made Choices that others hate, or rather—we patronize a bit—they don’t understand. We reflect on a Spirit who coaches us better, but also in light of, man’s and woman’s coaching of us past. We reflect, and our remade and do regroup and do have our go-to for any quieter or lazy hour. We have our bookshelf for any absent-minded page-turning. We have our fellowship for any self-check, sanity-check, warmth passed around, love shared. And as Christians our soldiering duty is to Believe all is dynamo and burgeoning Happening. All is ours to grow into and at once to announce broadly as being our gig, our homecoming, our sense of Purpose.