2024-11-14 A Meditation on Common Appearances

“18 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. 4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.” (Acts 18:1-4 ESV)

Care-free, the soul aloft puzzles over obviousness and over elusiveness; would that all life were to be judged on the basis of our lofty hours, the times when all nay-saying takes a back burner, the times when we concede nothing to “pragmatics” and “practical” explanations: soul, your calling here is no mistrodden wrong turn, but rather what comes with your Confession, with your Testimony, a momentum towards and not away. After all, it is fitting that such a one as this should be a Christian, after all. It was their childhood basic training. It was deeply reverent around the Potential Witness of one not having graduated from the childhood basic training, but still having had that qualifying Experience and Tutelage as if by some divine accident.

To the leader all seem like leaders, and to the depressive or the one hiding from a true Calling, all seem not called. We are those who don the mantle of playing alongside each other, all avenues synced, parallel, in unison, and in divine orchestration: we strive after some Basic Leadership that earns its rightful place because it is sourced in humility: on some level, O elevated one, you have a knack for sharing your Witness. Maybe a little left of center, or off-the-beaten-track. Maybe a little to one side or another of “our kind of people” that appellation that can also become proud or covetous. Learn that all of us can make some Holy Injunction and Mannerism that inspires others. Learn that we can become regular zoologists around our weaker moments, our doubting or sin-ruined moments, and classify, identify, label and prescribe around Solving, a Solution most benign to the soul but harsh to the sin.

First things. First the fact God asks nothing of us by way of righteous deeds; our Deed is to Believe. Our Deed is to allow Him… Him to heal, Him to prescribe, Him to become Real to us. A strange dance that is, a strange Certainty, a strange practicum.

Machinists carve out elegant implements, chemists brew crazy concoctions, Christians sell a hayride so easily labeled “imaginary”. Yet words matter. What we say we believe Matters. It is some Divine inquiry, curiosity, venture capital, that has Allowed us both to will and to work for His good pleasure… on Divine things. On spiritual things. That friend in whose eyes All is Forgiven, that is, who literally begins by pointing out some benign or more generous interpretation.

The Heavens once opened, the witness never forgets and yet… growing pains. And yet… excuses. And yet… strange hiding places and self-chosen corners most hidden. We are Risen Up because God on High believed in “something”. In something indirect or elusive towards those venture capitalists who ask what is the bottom line. Who ask, where are the capital gains, where is the balance sheet in the black. No, this is a Modern Times idea: get a “meme” out there, and see it soar. See it via advertising suddenly make certain things the status quo and the must-haves. And our “meme”… it is a fresh and dynamic bleeding edge Relevance: God is Relevant in this generation, unlike ever before, we are on the cusp of a New Evolution, not with racist notions of “purity” of what we cannot in good faith control—our blood—but in Light of His coming Judgment. A judgment borne in time testing and trials, which trials do finally illuminate just whom and what is Blessed, Benign, Beauteous.

It is not that anyone is judged unworthy, only that in the comet’s flight and in all things caught up in the comet’s tail, certain of us will simply be bashful that we didn’t act more righteously. We will simply see the Good Gifts gladsomely passed out, and our own estate… well, there’s that. Please O Lord, let it be Your estate that we come to know as our own! For some that final Judgment will be a period after calling on the mountains to fall on us. For some that final Judgment will be that Saintly politeness and simple unneedy response to a Good Gift: give it to someone who needs it! I have all my wealth treasured up in the heart! And then to those who are a little humored but also bashful: Oh, I could have gone that route so easily… pity I chose mammon over manna. Pity I chose to be merciless to my underlings rather than to establish a Sabbath a la Ten Commandments, a Sabbath for all, a Sabbath in spirit above all. Pity I made my words-of-record before my kids, be ones mean or abusive to my spouse.

It is beyond all doubts that all crazed paradoxes and mazes of true War, is a realization that War is Today. We are already proving the Doctrine to be True, not just because it is producing odd fruits, but because it is not resting quiet. It seemed but an instant, as we passed from this life to the Next, to the one saved up for us. But in that instance so much was revised and rewired. If prayer seems not to be answered, well, He knows better than us what our True Prayer is after. Our terrified waking in the night, our kneeling around just how many decades this wrong will require to be righted, that is a level of Patience that God owns. And He will entertain us and coach us and bring about something yet more Beautiful in the interim.