“27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. 34 So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35 So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”” (John 12:27-36 ESV)
Imitation, semaphore, toeing the line and anteing up: who knows but that for this hour you were formed? In the great rush who will stand tall? Will this our hour of glory prescribe that the rest of our lives shall pale in contrast, shall go the way of boredom, shall live in the has-been categories? Rather, God spears all such defeatist or moping thinking: always, He will be with us; forever, He will guide and shape us; to all eternity, He will be our cadence and our lockstep.
More, not everyone Dies, but all someones shall be Changed, in the twinkling, in a brief pan judgment, in God’s intervening Work in the world. This is a change in a twinkling intended for the Ages, for All Time, ushered in to the Eternal. It is our hope and mainstay, to know we were indeed formed for the Hour, and the depressive spirit knocking at the door… to her or him we concede not for a moment.
Already the radio waves have gone zany. Already the great rush is upon us, nothing so calmly revelatory as a public Mandate or Declaration of War, for the early stages are just as fly-by-night as the peacetime positioning and assembly, of intel networks and social butterfly Service, that is, those who are socializing are Engaging Peace and Broadly Understood commiseration: all in this Together. At the barroom, in the parent-student dialog, in the workplace corporate party, at the roundtable of community, and more.
Our war is therefore thankless, but we of all people least need Recognition and Award ceremonies. There stands the greater Man, Woman, she or he who was a perpetual motion machine in and of themselves, Creating Cause, Deliberating upon Disposition, Deciding upon Manner of Engagement. Our engagement is with a pundit’s aerial birds-eye View of the playing field, the Game in our midst, the boots on the ground Fact: for some, they gesture this way and a hundred K go that way; they grimace and point that way, and ten thousand strong take up the armor.
Therefore to be self-propelled, this is never a solo journey, but rather with a great Mass called the Invisible Friends, who are quite real though doctor and scoffer Doubt, have not themselves had the Experience, do not themselves Recognize a friendship—one of a hundred dozen or more—formed over a brew or a glass of lemonade. Nevermind Friendship alone, either, but rather some Time when we were Invested in by a lover of souls: taught, to think of ourselves upright and Moral, taught to think of ourselves Valued and Intimate with good deeds… of self-propelled Service, self-discovered Agency, self-enabled Training.
And then comes the cavalry, thundering already at some distance, the cavalry that Acknowledges, hey, pinch yourself you’re not dreaming or fantasizing, your personal Cause, Battle, War, it was bearing the weight of hundreds, nay thousands, of lives on the line. Lives that could go worse than death, could go unsaved, neglected, unministered to. For whom the Inevitable—the Depressive End Times—become the only language known. For whom the atheist becomes the Mark of the times, that Man is at the throat of her or his fellow Man always… such is their “word”, and yet to the soldier: “give me a podium to act from, and see me change the scene!”; to her or him there is no fear of running dry, running out of Inspired Acts, having a one-hit-wonder and nothing more… ever… again. That is, more: who knows but that for this hour you were Formed and Created in the womb? And it scarcely matters that you will be hemmed up by injuries sustained and moral compass degraded, doubted, sins accumulating or attributed at least. You were Needed this hour, and what more is there to say? Some will not die, but will be Changed… in a heartbeat, in the twinkling of the eye.