“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 3:6–13 ESV)

Accelerated and amped, the careful Soldier knows the majestic and magnificent Power of Presence, power to create and power to destroy, power to befriend and power to go panicky down another route. And the dull roar of inevitability: it can feel like all circumstances are coalescing around Concession to Evil, Status Quo, Corruption.

Accelerated and amped, the Soldier strives to be about the Master’s business, to analyze and prophecy, to stay personally Clean through and through in order the better to speak uncompromised words, to Understand such cleanliness as something post-legalism, couched in Grace, in Experiential Forgiveness, in post-confessional Reassurance.

But the loud sound of this Accelerated and Amped soldier, does ricochet and blast the hearer into some distant Cloud Formation, Gestalt, Reactive unthinking Response, classical denial (think Peter), fervent Professionalism in a sinister sense. We are Loud indeed, and expect… like the front-line soldier to whom everyone is carrying a gun, alongside the blissful community members who in blase fashion fail to see the guns and drugs and corruption Rampant.

If we pick a fight, therefore, it is with an Entity beauteous and wonderfully, terribly Made. It is with our own Fright Zones, with our own Caprice and Sinister economical thinking. But too we are those possessing Largesse, confident in the Friendly Approach as nothing more than Salvific to the career and work-oriented Mind. Those who have not had the Experience of emotional attachment, or were hurt; those who do not know the Self-Giving of the friend upon a Cross or night on the town. We can and Do Meet Christ in a gladsome Friend or Exchange of pleasantries.

If the years are unkind to us, it is because we fail to Prove: Time Was, I would never have entered anything community-like without a handful of friends alongside me! And now… the internet era, the fact of a threatening stormcloud within the church, we are Alone to all appearances and therefore people shirk from us and insinuate or explain conveniently and in obvious fashion, the Verdict.

Jesus gave to His people life experience, dating experience, things a church in precious fashion overlooks and acts sinister about. If they are not quite sure that Love is the right way forward, that a gentle correction serves the purpose more than a loud sounding gong, that we are the Flowers of St Francis to some monastic extent, then they are not quite sure they want to Associate with the corrupted ones, with the prodigals, with those bearing a shadowy pall of Hate as in Hate Received, Directed their way. Directed our way.