2024-10-11 A Meditation on Carrying On

“32 And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38 of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” (Heb 11:32-38 ESV)

Amidst the mad dash some will drop out: the verve factor is arrived upon by Anticipation, the nerve factor makes for some solemn souls to go headlong into no-can-do. No can put together some coherent truth claim, some soup-to-nuts factor, some top-to-bottom logical band struck up. To fight on through the misery, through the over-exalted state, through the loss of grounding: all this is to fight on in some strange appeal to Christ’s all-encompassing Foothold. He is grounded. He is pluck and composure to the soldier. He is that winsome gladsome grin at day’s onset, the wild nothing-bolted-down eagerness one more step further to go.

Because those who wince in the headlong stormwinds are now those carried by their more resilient brethren, sistren. All hands shall appear on deck; all composure is relative to some Foothold Mysterious, that some still do gladly venture forth even though their intellectual half somehow of a sudden feels disconnected, alienated, puzzled over. We puzzle over the question: am I a good soul, after all? Am I right to fight in this war of spirits? Am I correct to Believe, this soul and that neighbor: together we form a non dubious Bond; together we have the scare-factor towards all doubts, the lively-factor towards all benefits; together we race through events approaching lightspeed and overturning of limiting speeds. We are overturning in that strange Pause that begins to be adopted, that innate self-confidence that begins to be Answer unto all more peacetime foothold adopted.

Then unto the questions: how deep and broad is our faith testimony? In times of trials, is it something flat or little, quite tossed aside in favor of more traditional or societal considerations? Or is it a top-to-bottom thought-out strange alliance with Christ Himself? He who made first peace and then war, sending His disciples to testify, and then to soldier on, being our First Strange Companion. We are companioned and in this fight we are somehow to beleaguer through the sped-up cycles, circumstances, coherences: to have at last deep reliance on a Rock well beyond our own invention or experience: we experience Christ as a courageous plateau because the picky thinker we reassure with His knack, gesture, On-mentality.