2022-11-22 A Meditation on Reckoning

“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Pe 2:10 ESV)

Things being what they are, all of us face a reckoning along the lines of past mistakes, coping with what is different from ourselves, denying the power of love to heal even these things; all of us are soldiers of a war inexplicably fault-finding: a war that comprises so many mistakes past and so much muddled output, that we have nervous breakdown almost if we ever face things squarely. That is, we are sensitive to a mega-culpability, an insane bout with our flawed, inept, error-prone, illogical, life’s projects.

As soldiers we nonetheless have words of reassurance this day: today, if you hear my call, do not harden your hearts (Heb 3:7b-8a). We believe that our cause is right, even if it was time and ages ago when we botched up so much and failed to “put the knife in”, failed to make the conversion, failed to have the heart-to-heart gathering, failed to lay down our sinful pride and sinful patterns, and modestly, hungrily, service-mindedly, purposefully, to do that boring deed of going to war.

Stage one is realizing we are not ourselves God’s gift to the equation, to mankind, to those whom we meet. Stage two is recognizing our own branch points, denials, frustrated judgment of others. Stage three is accepting the offering of those with whom we fellowship, who are showing us love, who are just as aware of the insanity of the meeting, aware of the miracle of it coming to pass: past tradition, the experience of friends and neighbors, suggests some borders cannot be broached. But today they can, and they are, and we treasure the fellowship that does arise.