“13 But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? 15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless. 16 Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me. 17 They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together. 18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” (Ps 88:13-18 ESV)
Absolute revisionism or revisiting: who we are today, tragically underperforming perhaps at least according to day-old hopes for our lives; who we are is a case of existential “here I am” each and every day, so many arguments laid quiet or laid to rest, because after all we are not those to complain. Logic doesn’t apply; legalism and Expectation is a forlorn forgotten notion. The ones Christ most allows to be tried… these are heroically, quietly, uncomplainingly, carrying on each day with nary a peep of reactionary complaint.
The existential reality is that our dream life, our prayer life, our “where are things” prompt-response life watches as movements shift or albatrosses flutter, first here and then manfully, strongly, efficaciously then there. We are those Strong, Centered, Arbiters of all things, at least in prayer. We watch: watch as the battle lines move and the wild-eyed prophets go to war, to the front, to a thankless Underperforming of their own, only this: that no faultlines are etched in stone, the performance is Bold and Beautiful; the soldier is Recompensing, Reacting, Responding, to any and all cynical jibing disrespectful taunts.
Unfazed and not unhinged, the soldier Today is licensed to see the world not as a courtroom of right and wrong or of legal logic, but as a battle zone, with push and heft, with pull and strongman antics. Because our day-end trip to the barroom with friends or our hasty exit from the novel or foreign City, our daily Angst and Puzzling Consciousness, is met with Absolution and Satiety. We are satiated, to rest in the Master’s arms after a day of work. We are normalizing our minds and souls around Constant Strife, strife we are unfazed by. We are not unhinged. We are Bold because a militant’s mindset—such as that of Christ Himself, the great soldier of sacrifice—suffices, absent the moralizing or frustrating moments or self-deprecating self-hatred moments: the soldier has no such Time to pontificate on the unnormalcy or irony of life. The soldier sings hymns and passing prayers, going to a Special Place all unique and personally-designed.
This is our Manifest Destiny, then, to Rise Up saddened but emboldened: sadder for the Fact of war, and bolder for the healthy self-confidence that says, “Send me!”. It is a strange confluence of tides and currents of society, we finding conjoined particles at massive distance, the foreign wife or husband, the distant new friend, because the third culture folks, the unnormalized folks, the ones pinched just so in their youth, as to be people of ennui and wistful Searching. These “get along”, all warmongering aside, all notions of a Muslim or Jewish town being through-and-through inimical to the Cause: we instead Make Friendships. We Recognize blight or plight of mankind, generally: against the demons of the age. We are those Called to join forces prior to it being made black-and-white by the hawks. Battle lines are crossed in maddening spycraft and intelligence work, because no war is so clearcut, the enemy is Within, the lines are crossed, by those deemed unmilitant, Innocent, inconsequential.
No one is inconsequential: we face Frustration because of the looming War, but also Composure because we can finally lean on each other. It is a good feeling simply to love on someone else, to Rely on them a bit, to see unselfish Service lived out. We do this because we try and serve on the behalf of someone else, as well. If no one else, then on Christ’s behalf.