“6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. Let No One Disqualify You 16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. 20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Col 2:6-23 ESV)

A shadowy land, grasping into the dark and asking for something to coalesce: too readily are we lackluster or bleary-eyed, when Readiness is the only game in town. Too readily are we like a bland broth rather than the meat and potatoes that are Actionable, Manifest, Definitive. We want the substance to cohere and emerge readily from the shadowland. We want the Agreement to counter the blase nothingness: agreement to stand together, agreement to bear one another’s burdens, agreement to the gladsome repartee wherein all was restored in a twinkling of the eye.

For we fawn and temper around the Actionable, around the meat and potatoes, around the Strength-Points. The species called Ready, called Alert, called Embracing the Unknown: this is the watchperson’s mantra, and our Fact of both detesting war and of going strongly into that night of war. If it comes, we are those most sanguine, tempered, going with things because while not in our hands, God has the highest Hand in the land, in the game, in the milieu, in the gentle Testing of each soldier’s comport.

A little receiving of Spiritual things, a little of the fresh outpouring of the Spirit, a little Stark Encounter: God is Stark and In our Face with His insistence on a leg up. He insists that we continue and complete the Race started in Him. By a delightful way and means called Grace, that the ball really is in our court, to honor Him as Holy or to demure and look elsewhere. No matter how hard we look, this is His fatherly and motherly Patience, we will come home to roost eventually. And this in no lugubrious coercive way, but Willingly, because He was mum and glib and yet likewise Ready and Dear to the soul.

The training in righteousness therefore is a bit like self-exploration versus a university course: rubrics exist for hastening the Knowledge Attainment, but also our own exploration gives us Cred and Street Knowledge. We Own the problem domain a bit more than if we went fancy and Proper. We Own… we have wrestled with sin and know it’s pathetic demands. We have wrestled with enmities and know of a Mature Thinker’s strong aversion to any War, even if the kids are clamoring after Hate and Exclusionary Thought. But again, while we seek the meat and potatoes to meet the broth, to give each its proper Role, as we do this it is code language for Readiness because of Tomorrow’s War. We shall be Ready, because we knew landmarks unmoveable and Faith on a gyroscope or wild rodeo ride still holding down the fort. We were Already those Stunned and Awoken, so no incursion, no invasion, no foreign turf war or domestic civil war, can shake us. And our substance is not in this Hate and Warmongering, but in Christ and a Doctrine sadly we at times must put on hold, to do the Fighting and to do the Immediate Reaction, the Immediate Incursion, of Hate directed our way… hate for Him, hate for what He has done in our hearts, hate for our new normal of Love known and true.