“13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13 ESV)

It’s very good that as prophecies cease, as miracles wane, as literalism and secularism surmount, God is still at work via the Christ, via the insane ways our brains wire around community and we rise and fall per whatever Expectations are thrust our way; God is still at work via Concrete Deeds of said Christ and apostles, of said Followers and Certainty-Keepers. These… to these was Given the Vision of holy Manna from on High, and strangely pinching themselves come dawn, it is Veracity and Certainty that what was witnessed was Sublime.

Because we are daydreaming and walking on air some thousand years hence, rather, some few weeks hence more likely, coming to a Time when Everyone will be clamoring for More, Everyone will suddenly have the mud washed from their eyes (speaking of miracles) and circumnavigate, perambulate, waltz around those Possessed of Spirit and Manna. 

Because we have a Duty, us to whom was given the Spirit, was given the Holy Decree, was given the Trust Fall and Caught Danger Zone Surpassed: we have a Duty to act Already, prior to the groupthink, prior to the people en masse, prior to the Weening, Glistening, Enticing and Promising Future Thought. We dwell on Future potentials, and what if all these are but an insistence on impossible Perfection? What if our heart of hearts is incapable quite of tolerating a middling Efficacy, a half-way Perfectionism, a lousy Evangel shared? Is our glee in prayer, is our delight in daydreaming, is our self-embrace in head-check, is all this an impulse or urge not commanded? Is Christ trying to teach us to get “there” via something Difficult, the “Cross”?

Because when the rush of Time and Circumstance occurs, we will cease worrying about such a time, because our Salvation is in Cruciform Life Today. Our Salvation… though we be the chief of sinners, our Salvation makes no lousy reliance on a hoped-for-tomorrow, rather on Here and Now I am Content. I am Content to know I tried with my all, I may have failed with my all, but bah humbug and so be it, here I stand.

The Christian’s militancy, then, is surrounded with the Effective Witness of a world where prophecies will cease, where miracles will dwindle, where sagacious Intellect will wane, but where the boots on the ground Mentalism, the concession to secularists, “Hey, we can do it your way”, the peripheral and scanning Vision does find on secular Horizons that our Hope is intact. Our Hope is Him, a religion dismantled and dissected, disassembled and sold for scrap: that perhaps we believe in “Christ” but not in “Resurrection”; perhaps we believe in “Prophecy” but not in “Healings”; perhaps we believe in “Wisdom” but not in “Spirit”. In all things, it is One distant and dreamy Hope that accompanies the worrisome Soldier to the trenches. His or her Hope is somehow a Product of a life of Direct Experiences, and his or her friends do well to pray over and ponder the crosses said Soldier already bears. Each of us, traumatized in part, half-way parented in part, rather, in Corporate Fashion bearing the assaults day-in and day-out of Satan, as a family unit, as an individual yes Guilty as Charged but also Forgiven and loved on, as we Wandered, as we sought out something Mom whispered in our ears we ought to Find, our Tomorrow and Sagacious Placement, Embeddedness, in all things told rather Innocent, but still as Sinners we then acted and now act.

Therefore to the trenches of no longer walking on clouds, perhaps, but hearing the rifle shots overhead to a gladsome Exchange with a God who has removed Himself via Ascension, yet still—to those invited to the Party—is Real and Accessible. Some good Habits of Thought, such is prayer, such is meditation, such is Readiness. Because as we pray, we will finally Again walk on those clouds and all this minus all fear of our brief sojourn and its duration. 

Did we die well? Well, did we Live Well? And on some branching-out of physical Reality, in some weird sense perhaps we already have Died and gone on to a place heavy laden with Miracle, where we still interact and are afforded a little more time for Life on this Planet.