2024-05-04 A Meditation on a Divine Stage

“Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.” (Php 1:18-26 ESV)

Practiced, the divine dance in life is some foretaste of our role-playing buddies becoming our genuine article, the temporary arrangement is preparation professional and with the unction of a professional guild, to mimic what dance one day will be with our Beloved. With Jesus. With the Holy Spirit. With the Father who loves us.

Jealousies dissipate because these were enactments not of an infidelity but of a Sign, a Representation, a Proof-of-Concept. It was God-honoring, not unfaithful to whom He has given us; not ignoring the vows and the methodical, created status. We are Creatures. We dwell, and bloom where planted, and gestate, and rearrange and reform, to keep in sight the better half of our being, our Eve or Adam, our day’s field labor or birth labor. Redemption begins to retell the story. Redemption begins never outright to try to deny or speak in the face of what transpired, but instead to go with the motions by way of knowing: God redeems all things. Our childs’ play, our dancing partner, our acting partner’s role is a Holy Trust to point out the idiosyncrasies in thought, or better, the fascinatingly erroneous would-be conclusions.

They would have that this was proof of something dastardly coveted. They would have that this was an “of course” and a sign of the hipster now reigning via meeting people “where they’re at”. The condescension was meant to be love, it is whispered and upheld with stiff upper lip. Yet that love refuses to be the acting partner, the temporary dance partner, the exemplar showing just who-round-here is all grown up now. Who has learned her or his own role and moves? Who has become tandem in the professionalism, to the spouse or to the dance partner or to the friend eternal. Lifelong friendship beckons us to speak of the eternal. Things too holy to look into. That in due season a friend reached out, just to know we’re okay in their book. Just to know they are still around. Just to know: all these treasures, all stored up, are a socialization paramount, decisive over sin and divisive unto faux-partnering. The one less socialized does not know the head-spinning trip of all on the table meetup. The date. The nothing-to-lose would-be depressive risking all, holding nothing back, to talk long into the night.

Therefore we look in full color, omni-channel, and with firm gaze, at what things God patiently is redeeming, bringing to redemptive “oh yeah” understanding. God is abrupt and firm with sin; He nips and He tucks, like a good gardener. A stitch in time saves nine. Yet He does this in ways that ape man’s would-be gall and frustrated poignancy. Man obsesses and fantasizes; God holds no fascinated enchantment with things like salvation versus damnation, but metes them out in patience and in utility-mode. He watches. He stands guard. He trusts, that His own anointing by the Cosmos and which anointing is briefly glimpsed in the church as it lifts up hymns of worship, is proof that all ideas are Holy and True. We, too, can be firm to know our testimony is vouchsafed unto that kneading bowl called Salvation History. We are shaped and we gladly accept our lumps when in error, knowing that the tantamount and paramount Salvation is already liquid and smooth-running and well-invested-upon in our lives. It is a light-hearted floating ability to rise up and to soar: dreams, in which we literally walk into the air or start to fly; these are marks of a healthy confidence, some say. Dreams, in which the storyline is abruptly divorced from, in order to begin to be the ones who tell our story. Not the enemy. Not the abuser. Not the wickedly entranced. But we: hopeful and forgiving, we. New and practiced, we. Dancing long into the un-jealousy-inspiring night of play and performance, of ribaldry and meshing, of dance and number evidential, reminiscent of, demonstrative and prophetic about, what Union shall come.