2024-09-11 A Meditation on the Orb of Truth

“19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. 20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. 25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. 27 Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). 29 So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. 30 And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.” (Acts 11:19-30 ESV)

The orb passes from hand to hand. The duty is shared from person to person. Living faith—contrast with tired vacuousness, sickness, those regrets that harp on us and hinder us—living faith is preciously unimpeded, gently entering the soul, body, and mind of its latest human domicile, and there couched, defended, surrounded by prayer and by boots on the ground.

Living faith takes its time on respite, the hours of the day may change, the sleep may be needed, but living faith takes respite time simply to Appreciate. To stare in wondrous awe at a platform healthy and on guard, punctilious and gladsome. The Christian faith, to tell a story, meets the Moslem faith, meets the Buddhist and Zen faith, the Hindu faith, the cautious sects of Evangelical and Catholic faith, and their mainstream counterparts. The story is that all of us stand to be shed, power washed, such that groaning protests or lazy resistance doesn’t sully the Relationship, the Encounter, the Coming to Table Together. That is, belligerence or begging patheticism still Affects the Encounter, but that we be washed by the Lamb. We are washed and we are locked and loaded unto the deep-seated, borne in time and in affliction, certainty that we are of Good “Faith” Stock. We are good folk, and therefore whatsoever comes from our unplanned lips, will be a contribution, will reflect a deeper celibacy of morals and of indulgences, at least experimented with once so the blueprint and source code is in our mental framework, that being some foretaste of Heaven. Heaven the banqueting hour, for a society perhaps lean and of meager means. Heaven the half indecisive, is it better to have departed to be with the Lord, or to remain longer in these worldly digs for the sake of each other who still live?

Yet it can seem so wondrously overwhelming, and character study can be frightening: all this, you mean all this, is trusted to Habit and to Ritual and to Human Sagacious thought? Our best thinking on the matter, wow, it goes, wow and how high and how broad is indeed our Lord’s grasp, and what shall we-all do by way of being trustees? Only this: that He loves the wild-eyed prophet as much as the calm moralist. He loves the self-negating Chance Taken as much as the calculated Preening. Preening around things we “think” will please a works-righteous Father. Preening because we were not sufficiently humbled, broken in the place of jackals, by our local crew or upbringing or parental unit. That is, we break down and raise up, all this a miracle, for by Man’s thinking it must all “make sense”: either it was all merry and good, or it was all sin and depravity; we struggle to see the in-between just as we struggle to envision upon seeing a map of the globe that one zooms in anywhere to tiny detailed plethoric thriving communities: the good ol’ home country is not fifty states nor so-many urban centers, but bursting forth with life and instruction raising the youth as much as Instruction pastoring and shepherding those who live long lives on the Word of God.

So to those orbs of each Man, Woman, by some miracle having yet one more hour and day to help the power wash cycle and help the simple tutelages made interesting by Story and by the Savior who first of all was moral, but only so that He could discount all those moralists in the sanctuary, and instead honor some sort of loving unto the end, looking right in the eyes of each disciple to tell of something Bigger He is hoping for on the other side of that Cross. And we… we tremble at the thought of not making it True. We fight and we argue and we dispute regions around the thought of it not being True. It must hold up, that Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, did Rise. It must. For that is our gladsome exchange between brothers and sisters. That is our refusal even two millennia later to stop with the modern counterpart stories, of coming back from a loss, of overcoming sickness and adversity, but all of these things in the stark and Evangelical sense of an abrupt intervention made. An abrupt pinching. A safe and sanguine, unphysical spiritual intervention that gave words anew, words springing forth from what was circumcised or received a priestly “nip” or “cut”. The world is our priest. The world does to us things no human agent would ever envision amounting to a Resurrection. And in this, we are recipients of a Spiritual coach and bodyguard and intent faithful-to-the-end Guide.