2024-12-06 A Meditation on Come and Go

“3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”” (Heb 12:3-6 ESV)

The amped mindset meets necessity: a dimly glowing aura, a tired brightness, a wondering if we should pinch ourselves: is any of it real? The amped mindset goes deep and wide in curious wonder: mighty the signs and demonstrations, and some unsustainable poignancy it can seem. But sustainable it is: we do well healthily to recharge and to revisit our Reasons for boasting, our License to serve as titled and secretly-employed workers, in the Master’s toolkit, in our broad and long scope for personal Agency and Employ: we are always to refuse to sympathize with the naysayer’s projection: it is their own self-doubts that are levied in our direction.

All this to say, the dimly-glowing aura still alights upon our Purpose-Driven mindset, giving us abundant room to operate, in which to grow, on a platform of Service and Duty. We were once-upon a time lit up around the King’s secret work, until becoming no longer merely officers of a secret, but rather purposeful and intentional towards Everyman-mindset.

Every woman. Every man. Our calling is Special indeed, special operations underway and secretive Reasons no longer so secret but rather a Rumor or Attribution which we grandly attribute to all in our umbrella, all we meet, all who labor in this vast enterprise called Duty. To one another. To the Master. To the untold wounded and laboring masses.

Flipped and with every action comes an equal and opposite reaction: we allow the doubts for an instant, but we dwell in the Certainty. That our calling as officers of some brand of intelligence work, is no more so pretentious but rather is off-the-cuff Service as fighters, as simple warriors, as having a day job most sublime vis-a-vis camaraderie, simplistic affinities, getting along, all in this Together. The Master on High, He longs for a latitude and license that resides permanently Amped, only knowing our own hours of grasping, of reaching out to see if there is anything there, any resistance or response, any friction that might indicate Reliance and Support, are coming to an end.

No, for we so easily forget: we are indeed trained to forget, that the Spirit of Him, of Jesus, is with us every day. We are not only in the King’s chambers, but inquiring and consulting with Him regularly. So to the strange glances we get, to the aborted meetups we soldier through, to the others who share with those they meet their own reluctance to Serve, their our self-doubts, their own laughing cynical disposition to any claims of Belonging and Serving and being Officers of Something.

O something, indeed. To serve at the Helm of Christ’s meager and poverty-stricken endeavor, is to be those seen as Little in the world, to be abased and abused, to be forgotten and discounted. But whatever our status in the popular mindset, in Him we Delight. We delight to be those “Fools for Christ”, the furtive crew scampering through the solid and established Crowds and their Denizens and Pundits and Higher-Ups. To an artist it is subtle and sublime. To us it is plain Service whatever the chanced-upon oblique Reality and Demotion we struggle through. No, our demotion is a promotion: God has used fools and a weaker sort (tell any soldier they are weaker, and realize it is a fruit of personal Honesty thus to know one’s malaise or weakness) to Operate and Investigate and Observe. We observe: we secret away a roll call of just who in the midst understands a bit of the Radical Doctrine that makes soldiers and intelligence officers of all who come. They think it no fuss, but we make much and fuss a lot: this is a crucial Encounter with Christian Testimony and Personal Witness. It is worth our time to take measure and roll-call around where people are. And this because we cannot legislate more Faith, nor can we judge: instead we must accept what the Spirit has endowed us with, endowed these our peers with; we must turn that secret Confidence into a public no-holds-barred disputation with Mercy. To awaken the tribe. To call up the crew. To serve Righteousness to the wingmen and women. To blanket Nearness to the assembly. Something unheard of is aloft in the gathering, a Testimony of wow mercy, of wow apologies accepted, of wow Presence.

So we allow the feeling of plain Normalcy to be our calling card for the hour. But at the same time we are alit, lit up around Penetration and Accomplishment, of deep pride in God’s Purpose and Outlay. We can dream big, and know the experience too of a corrective, of some experience that shows us our big dreams are for a tomorrow-year, an eventual what-if. We need these treasures of thought because it is our proper Stature and Level of operation. We are not to go gloomy with the depressive, per se, nor with the one who concedes all too often, but to celebrate the malady as an occasion to do our best by way of a brief Prayer. We can’t fix it, but we can pray for a brief moment, and get on with the work of Service. We can ramble on, too, because we are after all lit up and coached and tutored by that Spirit called Holy. It is an invisible gesture, something we pinch ourselves around and do doubt, but such is the Mystery of God’s people on the Ascent, Lofty and Prideful in Him.