2024-09-13 A Meditation on Holding Fast

“13 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. 16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” (2 Thess 2:13-17 ESV)

Panicky, holding someone fast out of exasperation, mock horror, incredulity, confusion, all of us have a strange lure drawing us when once Called; and an equally astonishing observed in the element that with a footstep away being dry land, we invent all manner of doubts. Therefore each of us, gladly expels any hoarded or comfy couch of faith-based mannerisms, willingly dies even for those things so exasperating and the subject of relief-oriented ridicule. We ridicule: we cannot fathom just how great is called for the sacrifice. Yet astonishing homecoming to the one making that step—call it a leap—to the firm footing. Which we as forerunners point to.

That is, we can agree on the metaphysics: that hung on a Cross a man or woman indeed dies; that to return from death is in plain speech Impossible; that gifts of healing and reading, mindreading and spirit-of-the-air-reading, prophecy, all these are unheard of to the rationalist or the one without hope in this life. What we hope for, this we share: that to Awaken us is to point to the firm land so close by. To germinate is to have spiritual Seeds at work, a more reserved parable-telling, a patient close-to-the-chest playbook, a hopeful investment.

To hold someone fast is a comment on how a beautiful social engagement suddenly opens wide our mouths. It is a comment on plain Health inspiring us to unload. Jesus is our lover and beauty-modality, our He-man and dapper soul, our lilly and valley kind and beauteous. Some mystical power—even the magicians and unbelievers attest to this—flows from Him and inspires our plain speech. We are inspired, not so much to confess in some pedantic sense, but for once to begin to see how our lives’ histories have played out. It is as though the unspoken, by once becoming the spoken, enables us to go a swerve or turn further, and see around one extra bend. We needed to name the impossibility, in order to pray properly for any and all interlocutors, neighbors, opponents, vicious enemies.

When will that day come, that we can point to the “insert-name-here scare”, without the label of fantasy-driven, paranoid, ungrounded? No matter: we find ample fields of harvest, mines of precious elements, and a day’s work when once we have supposed: on what deep religious point do I agree with my interrupting and plethoric back-and-forth spirits, and on what points—formerly contentious—are we therefore more copacetic? That is, we agree on some deep “everyone bleeds the same color”, and then can see shifts in anything and everything else we may differ on. What is this? It is a prelude to war. It is to find Labor and What-If in the humdrum day, and learn one another’s language.

We allow ourselves to be held because we believe in those rivets and points of a blast mutually felt only we—those contrite and saved—are not disturbed, our gaze not broken. We were unafraid to allow these others to do to us what we have done to others ourselves. That is, maturity is alluring; we earn a new security clearance of trust; we communicate with few words, in order to be that tall standing Presence to anyone (no discrimination) who draws near. We are a Bastion of Hope to any who relish simple steadfast Strength. It never occurred to us: silence can be golden, or to contribute a verbum may be something we’ve matured enough to do. We don’t need to prove ourselves yet again. And at the same time, in a vast world, we wish for a Peace that is found by two disparate souls agreeing on that land so nearby, that careful step onto the firm foundation of Christ.