2024-08-22 A Meditation on Christian Calm

“4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:4-7 ESV)

In each and every day that goes by the Christian call is strangely meek, strangely uncouth, strangely trying perhaps, because it isn’t grand-standing nor potency-makes-right nor idealistic ventures. We have learned to abide near to a discomfort, a fastedness, an observed Rudimentary and Needy true nature of Man. We have learned to abide near to the unattractive and unbrash, near to the Mess and Lack of Fashion. We have come to a place that accepts the discomfort and the unsexiness. We have come to a place that Parents and Loves and shows Brotherly, Sisterly Affection. We have in short learned to make peace not war; we have seen the brash headlines and the un-Christian manifestations of yes even this the so-called “church”. We in short have seen rampant Sin and rampant Grandstanding, Comfort Zones either Patient or else Impatient and Obtuse, hate-filled and obnoxious; where we once saw something to flee from no matter the cost, now we see Calm and a Weaned lack of that flattery or basic needs and comfort zones; in short, we are Peace and Calm in believing.

All this because of the right basic training as to the soldier’s progression: Christian? Yes: from day one. Inspired? Yes: from the outset. Contributing? Of course: at the beginning. But matured and to a heightened spiritual perch? Well, that can take time. Time experiencing the slow-down of fantasy and comfort zones. Time reflecting on how wise and knowing even that early testimony actually was, for it came with it innocence of the more subtle and cynical flights down routes of new talent and obfuscation, we were clever all of a sudden as to being slick and advantageous. Now, we repent and are advantaged by returning to a First Testimony, not white-washing it as some sort of “new theology” but as a Come to Jesus moment that hearkened to radical life change. Radical heart change. Radical, not so-much “submission to man” as “submission to Spirit”: to Christ, to our brand of fascinating Endeavor. To a brand of composure Newly Writ. To be eyes and ears, hands and feet, heart and soul of that Man, that Person, that Woman, Christ’s Body.

We are hopeful but not too clever, wise but not too knowing, angular and erratic only to the eyes of the cynic and the one submitted to a secular onslaught; our onslaught is Spiritual and rightly points us to where and how Christ found His dying day. Was it His longing? Too die a martyr? No, it was His Duty, and a strange New Prophecy, that His people would go to the Cross despite a longing and hearty appetite for More of the times of ministry, More of the times of Testifying, More of the times of Fellowship. Fellowship Divine, a People trained up and celebrating that Life itself bears witness to His Cross and to His Life, and to His Presence. We are satiated and content, happy and dreamy, wondering deep possibilities in times of vivid prayer, fellowshipping in the absence of others’ actual companionship but in memory and future potential. All this shall one day bring together High-Minded Christian thoughts unto their right Service and Potential. All this shall bide over the precipice and event horizon, the unimagined ways Christ properly introduces and manages our lives.