“4 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. 7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:1-11 ESV)

Making hay while the sun shines, making mint through the long nights: Christians especially Rise Up in the Spirit, in the Camaraderie, in the Explication, Proof, Demonstratives of their peculiar Faith, under the pressure of conflict. First, conflict soon becomes the New Norm, second, everything we have to say—and do say, via protest or march or diatribes written, frustrated conversation topics—is circumnavigating the terrain, the oceans, the airspaces of sad outcomes which meet firm resolve. 

Oh, so did you forget your childhood lessons: that approaching the throneroom, well, to a child what amounts to presenting themselves gentle and kind, is always to be done Respectfully. We act with Respect and we Discover a new internal joust with Pride, with exasperated Disrespectful Approach, with failing to honor and pass over as Viable, Deserving, Coherent, and Together our interlocutor, nay, our Enemy.

It offends us, to accept God the Father’s simple request, to approach Him via the Son. Each of us, too, becomes said sons and daughters, when we earn the odd reward for an unpretentious, unpresumptuous, Approach. Somehow, to go angular, third eye, oddball Servant- and Mission-minded, is first to Begin to sense His guiding presence in the equation. 

It isn’t that God can’t wave His hand and clear the decks, separate the wheat and the chaff, rather it is that all things are found in their right Time. Life, life together, is life in Community, an Experiment, a case of Beloved Children eeking out a subsistence. More, He is like us in that the more respectable we are, the harder it is thus to Act, the more safeguards are in place, the more rules of non-talking topics, and no-go zones. But all this, that we might Understand His house has many rooms. Is it careless to remind the infidel in the equation that God is watching them to learn more about Infidels Generally? Is it granted credence to remind the Offended Soul that honesty prevails: this is no fight among children, but some sides of the fight… some of us… are Adults and Working. Despite the cute factor. Despite the invitation to laugh and denounce, cheer and boo from the audience.

Our fight as Soldiers of the Cross is regarding that Tomorrow Conflict, where what we are melded from, what we are made of, will be Demonstrated and will be Front and Center. Gentler aspects of our personalities, hated by we ourselves at times, may be our Invite to “come up here”. Our sociability and loving Relationships, these may spell—not weakness—but Investment in tomorrow’s Stockpile.

Faith spells unexpected Consequences, where somehow some life-giving Spirit is recognized even across formal allied arrangements. Somehow the right cause, this we Insist and Pray, is ultimately the one that Triumphs. Because the enemy has gone blind and… though its not like we too aren’t sinners… some Group Cause has swelled up and entered the fray. So to the broad seasons of Evil in the Land: to these we submit not even for a second, because the welcome Conflict, the Beginning of our day’s labors, this is only Welcome insofar as a slow death is crimping and squeezing out the lifeblood of our peers. We are the Father’s boots on the ground. We are the Spirit’s ricocheting thought-spaces parading about. We are the Son’s sadder alone Walk to the Cross. All these things, and we are Ready, Able, and Willing, to accept the New Normal and enter what to historians may be reminiscent of the hundred years of war that followed the Protestant Reformation. That is, God gives to His Christians some Ability to hold fast to Holy Things even amidst a warring new normal that asks us to accept far less from life. That asks us to concede what our better angels are designing, around systems that teach, around systems that legislate, around systems that invent and spawn, around systems that govern. In ultimate fashion, life is second only to Principle when it comes to what prevalence is sought out. We seek for Principle to Prevail, even at the cost of invasion and life. Life is now Eternal because of said Spirit, of the Father, of the Son, who educated us in Eternity some one chilly morning greeted early and greeted minus imposition or haste.