2025-04-11 A Meditation on The Glove That Fits

“16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. 20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Col 2:16-23 ESV)

To mesh, it bears repeating God’s promises are not demanding some weird austerity or heroic self-immolation. We arrive at a significant measure of the evil in the world, and we arrive at the escape pod called Belonging. To mesh: to be covered by the patterned cloth, the fabric technically or manually Informed: we are Aware and we are Plugged In. We are nurtured, breast-fed, patiently Loved on, in this guise and in this Status called Converted.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard… what God has prepared for those who love Him. The promises of Scripture meet the urgent attractiveness, contemporaneity, luscious enrapture, of a Today Grace. Yes: found in the Bible. But not boring, not lugubrious, not compromised by Legalistic heavy-handed Guilt or downward accusation. We are no longer Accused. We are no longer in Debt. We are no longer compromised trying to position ourselves somehow “halfway there”: there is no time to dawdle! We must come to Grace Now, and accept we’ve given it our all, only that He lovingly Gifts us peace and composure even though we’d like to work for it.

Because work we can! We can mesh… we can don the glove that just fits… we can each of us in some scary-at-times angle and position relative to the Church… we can fulfill His Destiny for our soul. And the friend meek and unassuming, apologetic and guilt-ridden: to this friend we say that the price is already Paid! We bear one another’s burdens: your sins, they are my sins! All that, in order that we may reach the True Discipleship called Situational, called Plugged In, called Game Day.

Clear-headed indeed, the soldier’s gambit is to sacrifice pride and accomplishment in order—no time to delay—to Begin to work in the Kingdom of Christ. And this, strangely post-heroism, post-need-to-contribute, we Accept and Enter In to the modality that “Just Works”.

Because time will come when they will be found in the wilderness, in the arid plains, begging for just “the hem of a garment” to latch on to (Zech 8:23; Matt 14:36). But we, we are already Home. We are already Outward-Turned. We are already Game Day. Christ has become Friend to us, that we might for once see it a light thing, an easy jaunt, to Bless a friend. And though we forget, though we take it for granted, it was no sure thing that this one would come to the fold called Faith. Haste, then, to make the incision, to make the cut, to put the Self into the milieu, the Game, the War, when time will come neighbor will be at the neck of neighbor. Already we have Cause. Already we have Martyrdom of some variety: spiritual sacrifices, dying to self, dying for Cause. And if we are more cheerful than the status quo, then let that be the casus belli: we cannot Deny God’s joy.