“3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf 8 and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. 9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col 1:3–14 ESV)

The steady drip, drip of an elixir called Copacetic, the Sanity Factor surfaces and the soldier reflects that his, her Modicum of this sanity is forged in a furnace yet lightly received and Named to be Religion. Personal Religion. Religion promissory of notes most divine, sublime, the melodic keystrokes of a piano and harpsichord or violin’s chord. We are not Inventing things when we say, Go, Believe, Thrive: all that business about hardcore lifestyle, about bleary-eyed Pluck and Fight (fighting within and fears without), all this meets the calm demeanor of a Head whom we meet simply on a friendly jaunt walking around the lake. Whom we pass in awe and wonder, but also Taking Ownership, realizing we have a Line Item, stock in this Crusade. Personal Crusade turned rampantly profitable though we be no profiteers, but personal crusade deleterious to sin, ambitious to Righteousness, calm to bide the hours of the troubling, caustic, horrifying day.

Therefore no artwork can quite Capture that Christ is in the eye of His beholder, His advocate, His soldier. Not merely assets on a balance sheet, we have already Made our peace with the Recruitment and drafting (no, we went willingly) of our persons, because our Creed is all the paycheck we would even dream to ask for. The right to Practice Religion in the world, in the forward position, in the bunker and in the compromised hours left to live headstrong household or cabin.

Right, because the day is sufficient for what they do in secret, for squealing and sickly Breakage of the Law, for the time-tested International Culprit, Fugitive eventually, to negotiate and strike up this or that exchange of Cash for Assets; we do the same, but on our balance sheet are non-fungibles, are moreover no Shame in being peaceful and Calmly Copacetic. That we are Hidden in Christ and He is our bulwark, is no cause to dismiss our Crusade as meager, weak, paltry, mealy-mouthed, and too Innocent. Our fight… see with this hand we crucify Sin, and with that hand we raise and pronounce a Mosaic blessing over our people as the River they begin to fjord.

Our fight is so Legit as to be almost Post-Fascination. It encompasses the Need to do the grunt-work, the truly boring Prayer for not just the exciting front-liners (for don’t we love the agents of the enemy though they be inimical, love them as fellow imprints of God’s creative Hand, and professional camaraderie of course) but also Prayer for the busywork of loving the plain and the Ambulance Call to rightly address the scenario of a Broken World, an enemy who has Ruptured holy things and don’t we resent them that, resent the need to fight a war we already won, fight it all over again.

Because wars we have known, societally-shared wars of career, of marriage, of family cohesion. And to fight them again, well, roll back the tanks and let’s march a second time. But on the side, we get so much new stuff done. More, the enemy, it is sad, but when they refuse to surrender at a good time, even more of their wealth is squandered. But not just theirs, ours as well; we are strangely of One Stew, One Mixture, One ebb and flow of Evolved Life in community. The call of “Intruder” may fascinate anthropologists for how effectively Good and at times Evil it can be, but so too the call of “Largesse”, of “Celebration of Life”, of “Dearest One…” can be good. We have one dog in the fight… together. And we posit Victory but no war is victorious, it would seem.

We hold these truths to be so evident, that the Christian—living in straddle of two worlds—can live in society while holding distant but Veritably True facts in mind, of his or her efficacy and duty in the world, of a Frontline Ministry needing all hands, of a “you can’t make this up” teenage or adolescent Dream of one day being In the Hilt, Up the River, Surrounded by prayer because it is our Personal Prerogative and Calling to be soldiers, that and nothing more, and to find our unfashionable Calm in Christ’s murmuring Kingdom and Example. He fought wars we scarcely but glimpse in Prayer: end of John’s gospel is about all that could have been written of the things He did. So we pray and gesture, and lives go to war, are placed on the line. Our “man of the people” business we try to ascertain unto the very end, because no one is sufficient in themselves, but is a part and portion of Together Body and Together Fight. We are Frontline and thereby afforded strange Vision and Dreams of the dying for the living, of the mystique for the uneducated, of the morsel for the hungry. What we “see”, a little gathering outdoors over coffee in cups, is Life, is Society, is something to pray for, because all communities have their blessedly sad Compromises, it is only in the strictures at times of a royal or presidential office that betrayal begins to be palpable; but the poor… both One Body and betrayed, and betrayed Constantly in ways too much lost in the crowd.

The hope of the Soldier is for an Intelligence about chess playing and clever junctures except all that subservient to the Hope, to the Heart-on-the-Sleeve lack of calculated mess and subterfuge. Wouldn’t it be nice, to be able to whisper something to our men and women behind enemy lines? Well, so it is and here we are. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a Contagion of goodness sweep over the land, and this one and that one Died to see this come to pass. Like Christ. In Full Regality. In Servant-Leadership. In Oneness with the people, and with those in high places.