2023-06-10 A Meditation on Availability

“16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” (Mt 13:16–17 ESV)

There’s a certain availability that we can feel guilty or wrongheaded to pursue. That is, a prime aspect of modern (post Jesus) theology is the fact good deeds invite hardships. Good deeds are a wisp, on a wing and on a prayer. Good deeds require that something and Someone external to ourselves, be our advocate and repose. Our hallowed halls. Our unseen vision towards the possibility and the future.

Therefore Jesus’s disciples wandered in utter inexplicable pursuits at times. If their garments were tattered, so be it. If their small talk was intense, so be it. If in all things they seemed a grant from a foreign planet, so be it. It was a worldwide catch of fish, of ideas, of significance. It was eternal and trans-global, to be a few steps ahead that are taken on faith. And us, called in any circumstance to be the purposeful ones, the convicted ones, the newly-confident ones, because of whom we serve. Because of that prophesy that persecutions shall come. Because Jesus is in each of us. We each have a heart on which alights momentary meaning and spirit. Each of us is a conduit for something eternal and fine to be at play.

The global relevance, then, is seen in a passing visage, people-watching or merry in conversation: that with ill intent perhaps from some, yet benevolence from a determined cohort, from a head of family or tribe, from a son invested, from a spirit responsible for the survival of all, a perimeter and a safe zone for the sake of a few interested persons. For the sake of modern (post Jesus) warfare, that we are illuminating something elusive. We are making promises and stepping into what is unseen. We are seeing with the eyes of a better Man than ourselves, the promise in each heart and the determination of each participant to thrive.

Therefore the availability is verboten, talked down upon, snootily evaded. Yet, we “go there”. We remember the dynamo of the A. A. meeting or the church sense of higher power and as for us, worship. We recall the odd ways good people are hemmed up and put through trials. We remember the joys and the pains of child-rearing. We are each minister to each other, because there is nothing off bounds. We speak of burdens on our hearts. We allow that Nazarene to spell an astonishing Purpose in our hearts, no longer hearts covetous or malicious, but in fine form the wise man or woman also meek or giving. All this to say, that we enter a societal dance, and we are no longer Calvinistic pessimists quite: we see good poise and form, alacrity, a word that we hear and wish to lend our support to.