“2 For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11 For you know how, like a father with his children, 12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. 13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. 14 For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thess 2 ESV)
Talk to the youthful amongst us, and hear told of glad tidings asynchronously with beleaguered, slandered, oppressed style. The youth Within: he or she simply puzzles over in amazement that this one—Obviously to be discounted, slandered, oppressed—is at once also Gladsome and Hearty, Gregarious and Chipper.
The Christian’s walk as a soldier of Christ makes space for those more wizened and unchildlike to reflect: life and death are here told, on the line; Urgent upbuilding is called for; Determined restoration is beckoned. We must Restore those slandered and gossipped over, because God has a plan to use such as these to Effect great things.
More, Vision is scarcely ever understood in the hour to which it is wed. Scarily, the center cannot hold, the friends declare war on each other, the Prophet goes bleakly and glibly into the night even themselves Questioning: is this the reason Why I was sent? The prophet knows a few things around here, as to Maturity and Grown Decision-Making, but also of musical chairs and the Attitude lately attributed, the fear of having gone Error-Prone, Rogue, Perverse, easily Caricatured as Unhealthy. See the allies demure and see the childlike within us still passively laugh and marvel, that public enemy numero uno, if we were to base things on our own observations, is quite a humored and well-cast society-being. Isn’t that ironic?
Therefore lineage and succession, these things hearken to the long lists of hereditary kings in the Old Testament, how nothing is a Given around the successor’s attitude or capability, their life experience and managerial Style, being a given: radically differing estates, individuals, heirs, are thrust into the throneroom, onto the Judgment Seat, and to worry plainly, solely, about who has the commanding Presence, this is to overlook ways we are already Coalescing and Ebbing, Flowing, in lock-step with our allies in the Faith, those never-mind the Billy Graham claim to have prayed the Sinner’s Prayer, but rather a more mature and dastardly Insistence and Firm Composure around a few points of Doctrine and “How we do things ‘round here”.
Thus to the Marching Orange men and to the staid Presbyterians, free-standing churches minus a bishop or pope, to the geopolitics that demand, increase Duty and Confidence that, yes, you O Child, are Ready and Able—indeed, Required—to choose sides in light of your Unique and Rare walk with God. What is your stance on this or that geopolitical Spat? And though the rubrics of Time do Mock and Disable our firm confident Stand, we are Certain of this, that God has placed us in Community and in State for this hour. Whether through literal dominion, or through a musical chairs where mystically all fall into lockstep around a pan-national, uber-statehood Agreement and Boldness to Claim the Hour. A boldness to hear a Spirit at work in this Generation, and all things, all truth claims, all land claims, all hegemonies becoming Second Nature to the Spirit. Today we are called to do Unique and Once-in-a-Generation things. Today we are called to know ourselves… yes ourselves more Mature and Wizened, Wise and Experienced, to deflect all those arrows of doubt coming our way, while also bringing it Before the Lord as a gift to His altar: He may be God, but God Himself flourishes within the submissions of His people. God Himself makes us finally to Understand what the plaintive complaining voice hates and doesn’t yet Grasp: why are things done like such? And our plain answer: God is not “drawn out” by those who are comfortable and feel a sense of entitlement. God is in the trenches and in the barrios, in the rural regions and third world, hastily doing things that the rich in our generation, the lazy and comfortable, somehow feel they have a mandate, a Right, to question and demand His presence or accounting in.
His accounting is that He is patient, letting the chaff grow alongside the wheat, because after all some social interventions, these are rather difficult if we aren’t ourselves in Denial about what it would mean to have already boots on the ground. Those boots, they are not in any wise a Given. We are those Boots on the Ground, for Christ, for the Spirit, for the Father. We rationalize and make plain, what the frontline soldier is Experiencing. And in this, we are gift and succor to Great Movements, where the Religionist meets peaceably with the other-minded soul. Because of our Conviction and our Determined walk with God.