“13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. 19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” (James 5:13-20 ESV)
Victory always entails some level of sympathy, coming alongside the enemy. Always there is some shared Cause. Always there is some worse outcome, their self-annihilating tendencies must be embraced and warmed and turned to mutual salvation. And always: picture the receptionist in a home for wintry-cold wandering homeless. The labor is dull and unexciting. We have become Heroes only in order to do the gruntwork. We must embrace the enemy’s over-the-top fantasies and outlandish risk-taking.
Their failure to see quite the simpler cautionary stories and battlelines: their innocence and expectation of surface-level meanings holding true: their childishness and determination to rob or plunder when the matter at hand seems post-Scriptural, not found in Holy Writ, an utter failure of Mindset to cope with our simpler shared Duty to be good people. Not to dismiss someone because they’ve been robbed. Not to disenchant with this generation’s War in some wildly totemic or idolatrous investment in the Next Generation.
The Next Generation: by the skin of our teeth, if at all this one succeeds, it is through Impossibilities and Heroism. We are Heroic around notions, not of thieving cleverness, but of Embracing Christ’s Cross. His Cross… it is our solemn Duty and Experience, learning On the Fly, somehow Walking on Water precisely when we’ve once “Died” and sacrificed All for the day’s work and Cause.
The Cross teaches us around those who make will and make testamentary Pronouncement, that one can “Die well”. That God has put into place these Invitationals and Tomorrow Gates, Doorframes, ushers, around whose corner we have scarcely a Glimpse except that He went there and He rose from the Dead and He bit his lip and Died, simply Died, that we might be the better Equipped for, for example, what Accolades the people are only willing to give to a man or woman no longer with us.
The plaintive Cause, then, is something Sanguine and low-key. It is something unfettered with the Harumph or the Frustrated rebellion. It is something even-keeled around Acknowledging, Yes, mistakes were made, but as to those in the driver’s seat, I hold no grudge only wish that the heightened animosities between us, that these be a purposefully-endeavored-upon Reaction sublime and unwilling to Frustrate or Hate.
Because we each of us have erred and strayed like Lost Sheep. Each of us have picked and chosen over a broadsheet of Duties and Potential Outlays, a way to Serve and Move Forward, some stuck in eddies of their own creation, others wildly successful, almost illegally successful, so long as their walk-on-water and gambit is not curtailed or hunted down. The soldier, he or she is Capable of strange soup-to-nuts variations on that Big Map and Chess Pieces of armies and navies and airmen and platoons, variations wherein simple Friendships Made, do hearken to a Lark, a peaceful Jaunt, a Wildly-Capable gauntlet tossed down: we are, after all, ambitiously Peaceful just as much as Ambitiously Bellicose. Because in the end we cannot snub and outperform our neighbors alone: we must take up the tedious work of loving on and praying for their errors. We must see that commonly-held wealth is threatened, civilization is threatened, the dying loser can do more harm than the dictator or successful president. Our battle lines… these are Owned and severe in their import: we learn to Accept the “Other” as our own imaginations fly, that as Paul the Apostle wrote, even to attribute sins to others is ourselves to be guilty of those sins. What we are capable of imagining: this we are capable of doing. So we walk on said Water, and act and live in Hope, of that also Promise, that the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable: once saved, always saved; once good-deed-enabled, always doing good deeds then. Even if to see them is to humble ourselves: our mistakes, these are Redeemed into Goodness. Our slights or missteps, these are Rejuvenated into Clever Jokes or Goodness. Our commonly-heard criticisms, these are only for the societal Pundits, not for Christ’s judgment seat and His urgent flight to the Cross, where all is Understood and all is Upheld as Germane and Purposeful towards the Right Cause.