2024-05-24 A Meditation on Being Alert

“17 But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, 18 because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us. 19 For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? 20 For you are our glory and joy. 3 Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, 2 and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, 3 that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. 4 For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. 5 For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.” (1 Th 2:17-3:5 ESV)

Alert and decisive unto revealed truth, the Christian who holds fast, does so in the middle of a world rapidly changing. Today is not the same as yesterday. Tomorrow might further accelerate the differences, in a milieu of some few thinking places preserved, yet so much unruly and wild. Not just unruly but also Controlled, Submitted, Patterned: the new estate, fact of the matter, has quite eagerly borrowed so much of what was in former times a broad playground, a “space” and “fullness”, a land of opportunity and of that deep reassurance that freedoms shall prevail, be made ours to own and live into, be there if only to reassure, whilst we strap into the rocket ride of career or dotted lines signed upon.

The Christian has hewn a space that outlasts the changing world, a space for “bingo” upon faith’s promises. Faith literally becomes the fulcrum around which so much now revolves. Faith literally becomes the compromise—if we call it that—of the newbie believer. Faith literally tolerates or is found just in time, regarding so much that isn’t free any longer. Faith promises spacious dogged determinedly preserved Freedoms, yet freedoms in a New World Order: we have signed our name to the Good Stuff, to a brief bivocational “study” of theology, to prayers alert and ambitious to eek out, to etch a room to dwell in, a spiritual repose, a hive mind, a community subservient and useful, if also encouraging and individualistic.

For, unto revealed truth is the fact of a world amok with change and with compromise; overnight slave classes form, or hunger and thirst blankets entire regions; overnight we lean on mathematical models and rational dossiers to inform our deepest convictions or causes of concern in the world. We find our purpose in light of things a little too broad and convoluted to grapple with mentally, if the mind is our only tool: we need the student of society; we need the scholar of progress; we need the conscience of Religion.

Religion dives deep into the mind, but is held at arm’s length and seems not to “stick”, until it answers the therapeutic need or proposes a full-circle investigation into its meaning writ large. We worry is my faith too pat and self-composed, a bit too rich for the blood? That is, should we be creating obstacles where there are none? Of course not! Yet it is only in some pressing need that a patient prayer-walk lowers the vocal tone and slows the speech in a way all-on and all-reasoned: in this we know the difference between compromised scenes and pastoral or encouraging scenes. We know the friendships that calm and hold portent of a Tomorrow equally beheld and beloved. Those missives signed “Dearly Beloved in Christ” calmly, gently push us back upon our first principles, the faith we believe in, the faith as it gives Cause and Circumstance if only we had adopted such a first principle, had prepared for the tomorrow War and Reality, had held in high repute so much that only Faith can see properly.