“14 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” (John 14:1-14 ESV)

There are so many compromised scenarios that we can be glad don’t apply, but still our cognizant outlook, our wartime prognosis, our sublime Comprehension, runs on parable and model most haphazard. How, just how, do we visualize people groups—and match this with patient Love for the oppressed? Not numbers alone but passionate ambition to Save, to Free, to Bless? Look at a map: how do we visualize the depth and breadth, the zoom-in factor that proves just how miniscule and jam-packed cities around the globe are with… with people, with life burgeoning abundant, with backwaters and main fashion pieces.

The Christian soldier attacks Sin by learning how it works with his or her own prerogative of Prayer. The Christian is imbued with Revealed Truth via that copacetic moment of Revelation, of Christ knocking at the door, of no bland nor easy-peasy Ruling Class’s modicum of art, but Hard Truths, Passions Expressed, Fight no-nonsense Obtained and Present, accounted for. We fight… we lament… we romanticize… we have non-cognizant Faith in a gestalt and word-of-mouth… more, a spiritual communication level… wherein all Experientials work together for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.

Mayday calls around not just frail, frightful Engagement, but even mayday calls around nominal Victory: an enemy we must go above and beyond to rein in, to appease, to calm, to Educate. Anyone can call up the ambassadors of a foreign tribe, anyone can go ballistic, anyone can go Rude and Reinstating of pogroms and slaveries even as unfashionable and rightly overcome as they may Today seem to be. Again, to the world map: overnight a solemn backwater is Equipped for war, overnight the passionate love affairs suddenly all work together for good, three dates in a span of a couple days after a year of solo travels. Three romantic interludes passed by on the street: others themselves In Love and Cooing to the ear of a partner.

War is ours to live into on Faith our chess models of white and black pieces, of squares to occupy and schemes to unveil, a draw, a distraction, a control of center. Things taken on faith. Things that remedy our consternation, our wonder, our sense of Magnitude as we stare into the zoomed-in, zoomed-out world map, nevermind that, the streets of our community. Put up a Sign. Begin to see how Rightly and Gentleman-like, Lady-like, is our foray, war notwithstanding. There is no excuse for too much haste, rather, for the kind of haste that cuts corners out of expedience masking laziness. Our lazy go-with-the-flow, our susceptibility to a stark Threatened reality, where we cavil and concede too much: this is cause and certain Timing to be principled and Die for the Cause.

To the soldier’s squinting gaze, there is always Cause to Serve and to Die even in those hours when the hometown crew won’t remember or appreciate. We serve a Historian Above, who does remember. We also recognize, as we go Serious, that we will be fraught and at odds with the hometown crew, even, though Still there were many who though absent from the hill Golgotha, did not themselves Crucify the favored one, Christ. Likewise, many Friends out there are blissfully laboring away in the vineyard, blissfully unaware that Today one went to be with the Lord.