2024-04-28 A Meditation on Distraction

“12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Tit 1:12-17 ESV)

Enigma met blandishment, the coarse obfuscation of a mystery divine, is no distraction in our able hands: it is the strange “mountains falling on us” of a holy endtime, a time when the Lord—robed in righteousness—does His mighty Act of Salvation.

By way of calling us out of the gutter, out of the ne plus ultra extraneous deed, unto facing up to Salvation Modality. Unto facing up to a stern reality, yet a sensitive and loving one: still, notwithstanding the blasphemy, notwithstanding the mouth agape astonishment, notwithstanding the alternate talking point, still the same Questions prompts us: do you in fact Believe?

And in this belief is that likewise strange Fact of all sins forgiven. It is no empty boast, no meaningless “All are welcome” sign on the manicured lawn of the streetside, but an experiential Truth: God is for us, if only we allow for—no, this is not waterboarding torment—a penitential season. The penitence, that it is needed, is a gateway to higher gateways, a gateway drug unto the factory floor of streams and comings and goings, all efficient and now no longer gateway but Professional: we are Professional sleuths as to any and all efforts to couch the gospel in Man’s ascent, in Man’s efforts, in Man’s “my way or the highway”. All this needs forgiveness. All this invites the prayer-warrior to reckon with the gladsome wild party, love feast, lovefest and dance-a-thon of Recognition.

We recognize, in each other, that the years while not kind, do obtain an Eternal Flame, a Significance, a Realite, noble and sublime, caution with words around the student of History’s Gospel, of History’s Personae each of us vibing, being Jesus to each other, the dream of a troubled soul beautiful and utterly compromised by a sin needful of humble accession, repentance, courage to Soldier On.

So our Jesus is a weeping prophet, a weaned soul yet thirsty, a patient Victim, who bore in His and Her flesh the marks, the ravages, of Time: who dared to fast where we are convicted for being a bit more plump in that regard, who was the First Attainment of the Spirit newly found, the Spirit who gives breath and seed to the sower, highlighting the new believer above the wizened elder. Formerly wise elder, not wizened and ready to learn.

Of a penitence Anew. Of an insistence, be not aghast too much around the heights of today’s crimes. Stay narrowly-focused on the crime of broken fellowship. Do not boast in your own sins, but rather thank God who has turned them into a commiserable Ability and Knack, the ease of office around others, the cross-gender capabilities, the “illegal” knowledge of just what—in no lustful manner—these types of people are getting up to ‘round here.

And no self-serving diatribe, the patient love feast is interpreted in utmost plea, like that of the Apostle, that though the “chief of sinners”, in us is shown Mercy in order that we might help and hold, might cradle and corral, might caress and remind, that a stark Call to individual wakefulness and Decisive Action is upon us: we, the first to know; we, the first line of defense, the first martyrs and prophets, the first Testaments to something New and Able, of looking beyond the aghast crime and unto the sovereign Face of a reigning King. Of a Queen who fills that deep need we all have, society has, for a mother… rather, for a sexless androgynous Being of Maternal-like care. Of working in tandem with one another. Of putting aside the onerous brash blandishments, the masculine meeting its more feminine side, and vice-versa.