“4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Phil 4:1-9 ESV)

Studied presence, the self-aware soldier acts in lockstep and in submission to God’s Spirit who builds up the seeker and stage-manages the outlay: we are stage-managed and of Quality Presence, to ebb and flow Memorable, to stand in the gap Sagacious, to recommend by our deeds Humility, Peace, Morality. 

The child’s question, how will I know if I am doing right? How will I know if I am acting In the Know? How will I take up such a responsibility as to be Salt and Light to those coursing through my checkpoint? And God’s answer, my grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

Presence notwithstanding calm humility, stands tall notwithstanding myriad Pains and Hurts in the soldier’s life. Our compromised self, our self-defeating actions or self-harming attitudes, our inability Quite to rise up to so-and-so (insert your “Samson-like” hero here) and to their tones of Strength, their glib gaze down into our meek eyes as the handshake is made; their spacious Qualities, their emoted grandiosity and things flecking off like shards of light: O student, O pupil, you, too, will be Tall and Magnificent for your people, when Your People do come.

Because our spirit is not of weakness but of zany Resurrection Strength. Our spirit is not of compromise but of Wild-Eyed ride aloft the bucking bronco of cynicism, hunched shoulders, doubt, and Concession to a faltering but no less real spirit of defeat. Indeed, that spirit—defeat its name—is actually a bit stronger for the fact of having its back up against the wall; it is why we also go Crazy-Style, Wild-Eyed, Cornered and not giving in, in our retort, our rebukes, our shaking off of the inimical Counterposture.

Every day to be coached in Christ, is to play in small part that rather reserved or cautious pastor’s game: who is in sin, around me, that I might discharge the debt to Scripture to be harsh, to be inquisitive, to be suspicious and intruding, even, against the Comfort Zones. No, to such pastor the Gospel is recommended, as a lighter state of Being, and to gape the madness, the alleged madness, of letting sin go unhounded, not pounced upon, unabated. Sin in fact, people are Inspired to Do Good if once they are loved and looked at with that same pastor’s patient eyes.

Pertinent to any deed done, therefore, in the faith, is that same lightness of being that is a crucial attainment: it is Crucial to know none can stand up under the burden of the Law. All are derelict and inept to solve their own malfeasance. All, too, have petty prides and prejudices, petty grievances and self-doubts, not quite your apples of lust and greed alone, but ways we discount ourselves and ape the Spirit who tells us, as He gazes on a thing of Beauty—His creation—that we are Good to Go, already standing Present and Tall as a thing of the community. So we do not lose heart, for though the flesh is wasting away, the Spirit is Strong.

That kind of responsibility is unheard of in the legislated and top-down control world of secularism. God invests in His people—the Father invests in His sons or daughters—with a half-cocked, entirely crazed Decision to back their—our—deeds of endeavoring upon things Holy. He grants us His vote of confidence, because likewise He has—no joke—seen War and is all the more ready to Invest and Countenance Peace and War alike in the hearts and outlay of His children. He is the first to forgive us, that our lightness of Being might dwell and rest unbothered and sincere. Unbothered by petty fears and jealousies, or self-defeating thoughts. Unbothered by fright-factors of what Compromised or Zany, Shared Battle Front we will face come the morrow. Trusted to lead, even, because we have learned not to vouch for our credentials using evidence of Schooling, but rather of Inspiration or Childlike Gaze and Trust. He watches, and that suffices, to assure the saints in the land that God is for us, and to Serve—to live and Die in His Name—is to bring home the bounty and to those who never return Home, it is to elide, walk gracefully, like Elijah and the chariots, into eternal repose.