2024-04-10 A Meditation on Living Flames
“12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Ro 8:12-17 ESV)
Always bearing in mind the wounds of Christ, always sensitive to the distant sign or conscious, deliberate, aware motive and votive. People are woken up and aware. People strangely bear up under their Cross while discovering a new tomorrow and a forgiven remedy: things coming together, peace writ in the stars, the fruits of long patience, a gesture that evinces the Reality: we were put through untold trial, but only because we somehow would find the Faith to bear up under it. We were not tried too much, except insofar as anything and everything was too much: it was survival and the sharp principle of Resurrection that continued and carried on.
On the front page, then, is our own call to snap out of the rote or half-sleeping walk. It is to pinch ourself and ask: what, after all, is in fact happening? What have I to say? Can I take that trust fall? Is it wrong to daydream or imagine the simple works of a friend or brother, as works Progressive; rather, is God’s plan bigger? Is God’s plan that we not account our lives well-spent for the sake of this sister or brother but because of Better Dreams He has for us? He intends much, and we concede too easily at times under the patient trials or duress. Instead to see the far-off sign: today is the day! Today is the fruit of long patience, a world hectic and helter-skelter, family dynamics a groan only until some Vouched-For peace and attestation alights on our mortal frame. We can go broad, and large, and Promissory unto each other, even forgiving the past confusion, the relished holding pattern (for then nothing challenges me from my comfort zone!), the off-loaded moral “qualm”, the simple one request when instead there should be a buzz of efficacious works. Of prepared goodness. Of sought-out Gift, the Reason for the Season, the sanity of human effort meeting a Gracious and Loving Father, or Mother, or Godparent in the Lord: dream, O soldier of God, big. Go wide and broad. Live where life sparkles in a night sky, a sky of dying rewarded with bright sparkling candle flame of Service, of Inspiration (coming from all corners, not merely the elite nor merely the entitled), of lives spent for this Hour: our Hour; our Time; our brief but memorable Fellowship; our gratitude and genuine Gifting towards the friendly brother or sister.