2024-12-31 A Meditation on the Homebase Courage

“7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:7-12 ESV)

There were lighter years, and there were crazier years; emphasis, spotlight, moment in which to thrive, these things come out of nowhere. To have some space to roam in, some happenstance arrangement to dance in, all this counterbalances against plain Attack and Distraction, against an ever-moving ground seemingly lost to any of its coherent middle platforms. We go back to something Eternal and Meaningful; we are bedeviled by outward appearances of fright or war or unwanted aggression, only to realize some more methodical outlay, some prudence and cleansing. We see violence, and learn to embrace our home life most benign and copacetic… for now.

For, the Christian’s life is all about heavy topsy-turvy momentums, when once we’ve tasted and seen the Lord is Good, that our better angels are tested, our soldiering outfit is battle-tried, our mental capacity to fathom, to imagine, to speak out loud regarding, all this is Tested. We can indeed breathe the oxygen most sublime, of the soldier’s life, the Christian’s life, the Call to this brand of existential wonder. To be on a journey most Interesting if not near to tragedy and loss. To be on a journey most winsome, if not shocking in what assumptions we wrongly made regarding others at times.

For, good Faith, the non-atheistic kind, allows that our alter-egos and enmities, these too might even have some God-ordained logic and morality infused. We listen to our talk, and it goes high and low, good stuff, bad stuff… but the latter, the refuse and rejectamenta, the evil stock broker or politician, the corrupt businessman or thieving academic, all these are themselves mission fields that already are underway. Already, God is building Understanding cohorts and high tables. Already we are to start with our own home front, as the locus of the war in its infancy. We are to accept this brand of dualized peace-amidst-conflict: to put down the panicky response, the daydreaming becoming instead now prayer, the alertness in place of the worry. We are called to go into it all Engaged and Winsome, already our sails filled and already our hands lined with spiritual wealth. Already, indeed, fighting because the dice they bounced in our furtive corners and landed as such: war, strife, enmity, but only for those who have the heart to hear what the spirit says. Only some, so see and so do. Only some accept, though you may have taken a wife of late (Deut 20:7) or be about some homeward business, that the right people are called for, that the right people willingly Serve and Fight and Volunteer, to be Conscripts of the Banner and High Table called Trinity. They see conflict where others fast asleep are tending to their own brand of ambition and clutching. Clutching reality, we are known for our ability to live in both-and mode: both war, and peace, both outwardness and inwardness, both acknowledgment of thieving greed and broad space to operate within. We are sobered, therefore, to take up the colorful, demonstrative, played out, life in community as an existential wow factor: who could have half-imagined, the persnickety hoarding but also the other person’s point of view: that things are in their court, to rectify. That things are in their court, to act upon. That some schadenfreude, some retaliation or recompense, is theirs to administer.