2025-02-21 A Meditation on Max In

“12 Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. 13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”” (Rev 14:12-13 ESV)

“But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.” (2 Cor 11:21-23 ESV)

Max in, a clearinghouse sublime blesses the human’s mind. He or she is max in: a veritable economy of items coming and going, unapologetically Christian indeed. The mindset of the prayer warrior, this is a mindset Excited, un-Bored, comings and goings melded across a fulcrum called Experience, the Experience of God for us, of assessment made around Cruciform oddity, we elevate those experiences and dynamics that speak a treasured Truth. Treasured, condescending, bowing down from the soldier’s perch, we are Unashamed. We levy the unpatronizing Appreciation: Soldier indeed, but simpler type all the more, sensitive all the more, gladsome times Adoring, Upbuilding, Watching and Gleaning the Prize Possession of His People healed, built up, strangely watched over and oddly Rewarded.

He rewards the unthinkingly poor and downtrodden Man on the street. The soldier, meanwhile, tempted to a militaristic society or contracts or ledgers, purchase-orders, does keep skin in the game, and does Understand: all life is seen through the lens of the Cross. Nothing, not “love”, not “pacifism”, not “confrontationalism”, not “respect”: no trope is mighty enough to, in and of itself, replace the Cross. The Cross… either one “Gets it” or one “Demures”. Looking for answers of a more tangible origination. Yet, too, we do love. We do spell Peace, as the kind fruits of social acceptance, innovation, excitedly-discovered Spirits, as they are Discovered and Adored: we Adore, that our society so strangely upbuilt from the cellar walls beneath us, so strangely upbuilt by a loser’s testimony or a middling manager’s ethical output. Our ethics… again, they are sparked into dynamo most sublime via appreciating the Cross.

Because the orbit of our mind, the “max in” clearinghouse; this need make no apology. It need make no surrender to the request for a more “copacetic” or “societal” definition of Labor. Our Labor is to thank forefathers and foremothers for a strange coded-in-law Right to pray. Right to prophesy. Right to stand and deliver on Gospel Promises. And the discovery, therein, is that the “max in” workhorse mentality, is unapologetically Strange and of questionable sustainability. What of a Country whose theme is so non-victory-oriented, at least in the matters of wealth and prestige and cultivated classes of society? Yet such is our apologia writ large: that we are open to the immigrant Convert’s sharing in the wealth. That the wealth is a Mystery, as to how it persists. That the wealth is elusive and scarce, the pundit or cynic unable to pin down the “max in” one’s home base: none of it really makes any sense, if you aren’t amenable to a miracle or two. If you aren’t willing to hear out someone’s raison d’etre. If you want some guarantee that the community, the Nation, will persist through its birth pains. All this is less the focus nowadays, now that we’ve found love, that is, found the loving peaceful Cross of Christ. We can now take it on faith that God’s will is for a continuity most sublime. And we are never accustomed to the martyr’s cross, except that we attain a peaceable scope on our days. We get accustomed to fearing no longer the heavy judgments, and we pray fervently for so many who are locked up or trapped in cisterns, who are called to take a stand, who are unacclimated and therefore awkward in the church context. That church… it must idealize and pursue the intangibles, the Cross that Resurrects with such plethora of effect and influence.