2024-03-28 A Meditation on the Day’s Battle

“4 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.” (1 Pet 4:1-6 ESV)

Emerging a bit bedraggled but intact from all we perceive to be thrown our way, emerging a bit haphazardly from the expectations of others, emerging Coping, Tolerant, Intact, it is the Holy Spirit who comforts and lights a path onward, to higher purposes, to a manifest destiny and Calling. For what are we but creatures of innate expectations adhered to, strangely tormented in one guise and checking off the Progressive, Success-oriented, boxes on another level: see how far we’ve come, yet how multitudinously tormented the day’s Catch turns out to be. Our fishing story, our back-story, our lost time, all this adds up to an outlay strangely Emboldened and not apologizing except insofar as the Spirit be winsome and Dutiful, innate and substantive, together and hopeful, for a wide latitude of Holy Spirit coping. We are Holy Spirit-enabled, to make the bold Claim on His work, on His service to the weeping and beleaguered souls unable even to pick up the task, unable even to Cope, to Emerge, to Overcome. We have done all these things because there is a substratum Winsome and Progressive, caring for the right things, caring and somehow ministering, first to oneself—we are what we live and breathe—and to others.

Yet in all things, on the solo crossing of a platform reviled, distanced from, avoided, and dismissed. As depressive. As unformed. As inchoate. As loserdom. We don the tattered garments of another’s loserdom to be the low expectations-met survivor and day’s gratitude enabler, for the hour as it gifts us or meets us or challenges us or frustrates us. We are progressive, in the Holy Spirit guise, of a Reliability and Future War already won by the Saints of the land. In whom is all excellence and discernment, reliance and service.