“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. 14 I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me. 17 That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. 18 Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. 19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. 20 For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. 21 What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (1 Cor 4:8-21 ESV)

Strength originates when first we begin to sense our own fallibility. Our own sense of on an ocean swell summiting and descending. Our own sense of after all just looking for a place to hang our spurs. An antsy posture. Waiting as in the promise of all tomorrow’s parties. Tomorrow… some Clarity around missional life, life devoid of mealy or softened compromise, strong for the journey, as if we could derive strength from a platform of ideology or from a moral compunction, code. As if.

Strength originates precisely because our better thoughts are after all still provincial, still happenstance, still compromised or influenced. What we eat, what we watch, what we engage in. And the end of that implicit discovered perennial fast, is to coast and glide saying the very opposite of the fastedness: come what may, God will be beside me and guide me. His Spirit… the dormitory empties, break time has arrived, and suddenly… is the Spirit guaranteed for life, or can He/She go flat? Can a few wrong words undo much lofty labor?

The soldier therefore is a spiritualist insofar as he or she is ever higher aloft, with a mathematical efficiency of story-line implied alongside general discourse engaged. We see analogy and parable. We see ever-heightening laughter and tickling, good cheer and joy. We may inadvertently—dear Lord, help us to dwell in the servant-minded humility—ape or frustrate a would-be friend, a present-day enemy, by how sharp or hilarious our murmured responses are. It can be difficult to humble ourselves truly to dwell alongside the enemy’s home base and camp, but to do so is no less fun. Only this, that our “fun” does ape and frustrate, does inspire erratic lashing out and weird surrendered ground. 

Society has its teachers who have instilled a Trust in the system, in the enterprise, in the community. This trust is then plundered with the de-education of fake news. “But I brought some trust to the table, I didn’t even have the overweening insight to understand I even had…” We can scarcely evade the news cycles insinuations. We can look here and there for a place to hang our spurs, metaphorically to be at peace and Spiritual and Rested and Led. We can resist the onslaught of news stories. We can strangely warm our hearts to the news that in fact you need only stand your ground and the inimical spirit shall in short time disappear (Ps 37:10). Do not engage such evil, it will fester and like vermin corrode! The very benevolence of your myriad sagacious loving in depth purposeful and receptive social engagements, friendships, teaching moments. The panicky concessions… these are your Reward for hard labors past.