2024-03-27 A Meditation on Volume that Motivates

“10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. 12 So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. 13 Therefore we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. 14 For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame. But just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true. 15 And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. 16 I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.” (2 Co 7:10–16 ESV)

Half the world, one might say, lives with an internal volume beyond manageable. Half the world, in slavery, wage slavery, under incredible duress or just plain impossible debts… the volume meter of the peace warrior is not to be dismissed, however: the notion that good work happens even when not staring down the barrel of a gun.

A kind of volume, internal and personal to us, is what leads us to be surety and peace to peers. We are on some level a friendly denizen. We have these near to us because of that finality, where plans and avenues meet a loud enough volume internal, that we begin: to be good citizen. To be self-sufficient. To give something back. To overcome child-like sharp corners of unworked-over selfhood. We are worked over and we Believe, that Resurrection lives on the other side of the coin. That Volume begets our own meter and measuring rod, as to just what any honest citizen of the community, would get up to.

And then to the soldiering role of the pastor, to point out in authorized channels what so many would call obvious and back-to-basics: to reiterate ad nauseam the dynamic whereby a tender and innocent soul actually did Exist and did come back for us: from beyond the grave; from death undeserved, from a family life somewhat belittled or unappreciated; from strange laggardly souls Attached and Vitriolic at times, the carried-along Fact it was out of no high and mighty Edifice that death came a-knocking, out of no noble war, but with one’s own friends and simple people who happened to be near, that our Concerns were suited up and dressed for the day as begotten in simpler places and easier climes. What we assume or try to put beneath us, is where that soldiering pastor labors on: to see the cause of “not being evil” as only possible in a submission unto the Cross Borne by another. Only possible when we acknowledge the days’ concerns as sufficient for the prayer warrior. Only possible when we see the citizen of the church as Sinner and Unjustified except in some worked-on, beloved-but-rare simpler manifest destiny.