“4 This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. 3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. 6 I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. 7 For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? 8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” (1 Cor 4:1-13 ESV)

The starting burst meets the starting impasse: some particular momentum is required to overcome that first hill, the starting gate, the transition from waiting to Here and Now action. And we rightly fear to jump the gun. We rightly fear to startle forth bold and uncompromised, only to find it a solo crossing, no one else there yet. And then meekly to retreat to our starting gate all over again.

This is all the pensive soldier’s invite to discern, to find and discover no hedged bets about tomorrow, no reluctance or eagerness to cross that threshold, but rather a proper race course of Action that at any moment we can leap forth from Enabled and curiously Ready. We can indeed find in our Faith the ingredients of many-a battle, of many a sorrowful Mourning that we are not the centered and all-aware entity we so long to be. We can be surprised. We can foresee a vale of tears that intrinsically we shy away from. There is much to this role called “playing catcher to all”, to use a baseball analogy. We simply want never again to be surprised. We want to think ourselves to a posture and podium All-Aware and Ready. Only instead the call is to lance forth across that starting gate, past the early Hill, not with all our cards complete, but because we have Faith the God is completing the picture in His way and on His time.

Momentum, therefore, is gladsome and hearty, to cheer the would-be combatant of Tomorrow’s War. He or she can indeed practice the role, on that exercise circuit, but no sorrow nor shame for having prophesied, foreseen, acted on, early Intel around a line drawn in the sand sooner rather than later, by a foe, by ourselves, somehow we know that our Strength on Display makes meeker friends of would-be foes, while we are forgetful how quickly that foe rears its ugly head if we are caught unawares. 

So we are mocked, but not unto death. We are mocked for the preparedness, for the exercised muscles, then domineered that moment when we concede to less readiness. To the idea we imagined it all. To the fact that in the heat of battle ideas promulgate and disperse widely, while in the imagined Calm it seems a lark and a vain search simply to find an idea or two.

Therefore no shame to the one who has surmounted the resistance, the hill, of their first Outlay and Outburst. They will not arrive on the other side, the side of Movement, of Decision, of Action, alone. There is plenty of truth to the claim that we find our worst enemies mimeographed and reflected in our own Actions. We are sinners. We were not wrong to claim a war underway, only we had to pray for daily Inspiration. Daily Debriefing. Daily half-crazed Insistence that we do well to be readied and pugnacious towards sin. Oh what a beautiful day that is, when we can Act on our better instincts even though half the world, the “normal” mindset and heaviness, cannot see clearly through the morass. Most of the world cannot have that half-cocked third eye vision of an Alternative to the status quo. And we, thus finding ourselves, blanket it all in the Peace of our Lord who walked without strife nor battle, except that He allowed the Enemy to do its worst to Him, for the sake of the meek ones observing, for whom the Message is not yet comprehended enough to appreciate the reality of Foes. We are faulted for not “getting along” by a status quo who hears strife and takes the side of unconscionable compromise. Peace that is a compromise most unholy. Peace that forgets the key message. Peace that in fact will lead to a blind generation and wars in infinity. 

Our doctrine is keeping a stronger peace. It is keeping an Informed peace. An Inherited peace. Intel about who and what is the Enemy, and Intel on which we act in self-sacrificial manner, giving of ourselves for the sake of not muddying the waters with a no-winners locked embrace of war. Always the winner made some ultimate sacrifice. Always the winner began to take on the enemy’s sins as their own. Always the winner lost on some level, because their personal war did not concede the claim that Militancy was premature or awkward or uncalled for. We fought higher and higher until we found that level on which we had lost, and then we claimed all the lower victories: a victory day borne out of a mourning day.