2024-03-29 A Meditation on Coping and Judgment

“17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. 19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.” (Rev 1:17-20 ESV)

It is a strange hope that has cast a fond eye and glance over the garden as tended by the Holy Spirit. It is a strange lifeline that has bowed out of the perennial onslaught of Judgment and Recompense, to leave space for something unknown to transpire, some cubby hole, some strapped-in mentality, to take Existential “Where are we?” to a new level, to allow and to back off, to desist in critique or hate-filled “obvious” judgments. On some front we were the ones invested in. We were the hope of the elders. We were the next generation, and a blank slate, a clean slate, a forward-thinking Investment did all in its power to avoid the brush with destiny and the brush with cold steel of reality.

The reality we live in, therefore, is no lazy headache. It is no overwhelming gifts but rather something tailor-made. It is a vote in existential frame of mind, that much has been overcome but more than that, that much still bounces around as “out there”, “fruits”, “constellation” of peaceful employ. We are only hardened by that fright that spells war: the fright of Total divestment, disinherited status, plagued place in life, divestiture. That is, the peaceful give-and-take brushes up against Now hardship and hurt, against say the moral insight suddenly met with, not just an invitation to shape up, but with the time served, the fact our penalty shall be years in the making, the sorting and Judgment and Recompense that spells cold brush with Reality.

Therefore the trust fall is sought-after, but not quite “trusted” after all. We don’t parry when taunted, tested, timed in our ambition-less surrender. Instead we try our own brands and forms of surrender. We try in the end to get a last word in. We try to dictate terms. We uncover what awfulness lives inside each of us, gardens though we be, invested in and loved upon though we are, in all things the rash sorting and payout demands our all, demand more than we can give, hurts and chastens the soul who wishes to surrender but is daunted by just how much is on the line.

The Gospel is then found in the very mound of sheer terror and recompense. The Gospel is a Now “Thank you” and forward march, in whatsoever cubbyhole or strapped-in slot we find ourselves in, an invitation and an intervention and a gracious Inlay of something New and Strange and Promising. We are now promissory notes of creatures and children Blessed, ambassadors for the higher cause and the sending Spirit. We are once more Blessed and Hoped For, as lights unto a derelict night sky. We are receivers of Grace, which Grace is lived out because it is top cause and Name and Concern. If in nothing else, our ministration unto the world is of Hope and of Righteous Soliloquy, fight, pursuit, emboldened friendship and warrior’s creed.