“3 Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, 2 and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, 3 that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. 4 For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. 5 For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain. Timothy’s Encouraging Report 6 But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us, as we long to see you— 7 for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith. 8 For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. 9 For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, 10 as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith? 11 Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, 12 and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, 13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” (1 Th 3 ESV)

To have something to say, it means that faith is no strait-jacket but rather dynamic and come-and-go sublime. What we have to say, is some urgency or insane Coalescence met with bespoke Calm. The church potluck… the streetcorner evangelism… the hey, let’s do church today… it all beckons us Go Deep and Go Lived Experience: the soldier squeezing his or her arms and praying because War is crazy, war is asking us for our all, then asking us for a little more; war is the Abrupt Termination before we were quite ready, because Now there is much to mourn for, that might have been had the Game not been betrayed to a fussy, uptight, persnickety Enemy. Our Game, our Promise of the Ages, the Fact we are buckled in for a wild spaceship Ride divine. This was Betrayed, and now we have a resented War.

Not because it was an enemy chose the Timing of our war, but rather that We Chose in parenting Wisdom, that all those benign Experiences and Pastimes: they can wait, while we Attend to a few things, ‘round here. We are calm and sagacious, of Divine Wit and Holy Compunction, not to go excited at the Prospect of this Christian War, but to go Sober and Measured, not easily aped, not easily disgruntled, strangely merging that “Hey, Unfair!” judgment on our lives, with God is in charge, God is the helmsperson, God is the Measured Response and the Justice Meted Out. 

We are fighting for our very Consciences, yes for our lives, but for our Consciences. And any Johnny-Come-Lately is just as welcome as the old salt around here. More, that old salt knows Dark Night of the Soul, the feeling faith has begun to be a strait-jacket or Hopeless, and the response lickety-split is that we go Existential once more: we meditate, have we—pass the blame—fellowshipped with Unbelief lately? Only we want More fellowship with the sanguine calm of the unbeliever, in Sooth knowing that they in fact, it was for such fishermen as these, such tax collectors and lawyers as these, that Christ was Sent.

Our straitjacket is the mockery of an “other” we in frustrated yelps… no, we give Pause and restrain the frustrated Yelps… complain about, as too sitting-Pretty, too Precious, too consigned to a retentive or uptight Mindset. In the end, as it was foretold, we will find our happy place but it may be with unbelief—call it with Disciples—than with the lazy pew-sitters. Their judgment is between them and God’s Spirit; our Judgment is to pass on our apologies in full intention of Reforming the errant ways, but more than that, to Weep, because of those who we did Let In. The dual nature, the benign easy aspects of Christian walk, and the hair-raising madness and licks bursting out at the periphery, of a madhouse Mindset, now calmed but eyes Vivid, Alert, Furtive, Vicious even. Oh, did it occur to you: even You, in the midst of a loving and benign Congregation, are holding in your heart Secrets of the Walk. And these secrets will be hated, will be mocked, coveted, gossipped over, and used to Undo each of us. Because we Dared to Hope, because we drove Mad all those pewsitters’ whose faith lies in a sense of supremacy over the “other half”. That Other Half has come home to roost, and oh, who will Speak Up? Anyone! Man, woman, in-between? Anyone!