“11 For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: 12 “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. 13 But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. 14 And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15 And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” 16 Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples. 17 I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. 18 Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion. 19 And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? 20 To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. 21 They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. 22 And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.” (Isaiah 8:11-22 ESV)

Somewhere our talk is offensive. Christ experienced as much. Prophets and pastors to this day say as much. That is, to pass go and to make the grade, this involves a risk being taken. We take the risk that we put Christ at the helm nevermind the naysayers. Nevermind the ones thinking grandly but a little unconfessed about their own estate. That is, to put Christ at the helm is strangely… not quite presumptuous, not quite greedy… hearkening to a New Creation of us Composed, Confident that there is a Helmsman. For, we scramble and labor, awaiting a moment of finally waking up, of coming to Christ, of getting some awareness under the belt, beyond what paupers’ awareness our gig in itself teaches.

Our gig, it teaches expectations from life: that problems will bring solutions; that we learn as we engage with our created order, with our machines, with our tools. It distinguishes the novice from the expert, some resigned perhaps determination nonetheless to labor on. To put Christ—a failure if ever there was one—at the helm. To have this steering apart from ourselves knowing where it leads. We have not yet focused on Today’s trials sufficiently to be all-ready and all-knowing. There are things we will wake from. Things one day to look back on: Oh, that is when I was dancing with such-and-such obstacle to Faith. The times of mourning that we can’t quite “see” though there is sadness in sober streaks lost and in resolutions broken. We were doing so well, but still Today if we still reside in such-and-such a place and such-and-such a dynamo with our peers, then Tomorrow we may well think of Today as the ultimate measure. When things were moving along quite Christianly. When things were hopeful though incomplete. When, in short, we had wings and a prayer, to ride on good man, good woman, to ride on because of Certainty of our helmsman Christ.