2025-02-01 A Meditation on Decision

“7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. 10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ 11 As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ” 12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” 16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” (Heb 3:7-19 ESV)

People expect that going with the flow largely comprehends, largely does combat with, the contention, the war, the malaise. Instead, successful preparedness, readiness, starts with an abrupt visit to Christ’s Cross. It is a corner turned earlier rather than later, against all odds rather than when copacetic, tuned into a Tomorrow Urgency rather than today’s convenience.

And what sympathy, what pastoral urgency, to land upon this soul apprised, this innocence lost, this harsh denouement, remainder, lives lived out: what follows, what is in the sequel, is Conscription, Drafted in, we made Today’s sacrifice of prayer in order that we be unfazed by Tomorrow’s gotcha.

We indeed prayed ourselves to a perch at times confused, too broadly-minded or imaginatively-on-quest; it became difficult to assess Normalcy amidst Abrupt Reactivity. To a prophesied spirit present. To a felt gestalt onerous. To a livelihood complicit in the malaise and evil. To all things that distance us from that Innocence lost via Innocence Gained: coming to the Cross, remade as those starkly shocked, wondrous, found within the blast radius, of Christ’s denudement and Humanity: Him for us, we for Him.

Gone the many ways we’ve taken from the Tree of Knowledge in the garden. Each of these is a blight and a mildew on our psyche. Each individually can be redeemed. So that innocence lost becomes innocence gained: we being found Alert and Cuddled, Self-Possessed and Nurtured, Capable and Held. Because it took a Safe Zone to allow us that neutral perch of observation. To hear the distant war cries. To see the blight at large. To feel the steady Abuse, backs hunched, an enemy’s victory over the general Social Things, the peace and handshake, the pat on the back and embrace, the safe friendships and respectful love affairs.