“11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. 12 We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. 13 For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:11-21 ESV)

Distinctive traits, borne by the soldier’s heart, incorporate the Passion of the hour: human distinctives, soldiering duties, invested and unrobotic Decision, Desire, Destiny, these are hearth and homeland, relic and estuary, to the Man of the hour, to the Woman of the hour.

Awoken midnight, the soldier takes Existential counsel, Existential decision-making, Existential state of affairs, around what-if’s met with regrets or shock zones: it was all a little too risky, says the risk-averse, or too bland, says the cavalry-riding braveheart. We go through long hours of numbness, even, but the reason for the season, the power for the hour, is held, upheld and vicious towards Sin.

Upheld, craftwork and solemn duty discharged, the Passion or Heart’s Ease culminates precisely because Soldiers most humane and human have Invested knowing no expectation of Reward. Invested in the heart-work. Invested in the uncynical soul-work. Invested… simply taken ownership and stock in the strange and bothersome Duty unto checkpoint and unto foreign land missive.

Sent by a commander-in-chief called Christ to the Christian, drill-sergeant and station-master to the Christian-Plus: to the atheist and freethinker. Experiential reality does Teach, that peoples will rise up to the expectations we set for them, none passed over except insofar as we see worldly concerns pass over the Genius of a friend or brother, sister or lover. These, too… would that all were made over in fashion like our own makeover.

And inimical retort: until such hour as we get the goat of a foreign King or Pontiff, what is the purpose of evangelism at all, of Invasion at all, of Preemption at all? Why not definitively Ape their sensibilities first, with our Love, with our Passion, with our Grace? So all may see: come-what-may, Christ shall be proclaimed, and His peace for our wearying War.

The station-master of soldiering lore calls this a witching hour, a moment of History most sublime, most determined but sublime: will it even be asked, “Did you not see again and again the Casus Belli, already and all told?”. Because strange reflections on our freedoms… these optimistic points of Gratitude, bewitch and come alongside strange Facts of a world already gone mad, already Persecuting the faithful, already declaring War on the neighbor. More, our own sensibilities… somehow our Prayer Life is compromised when their is unmet Strife “out there”. Our own thought line goes belly-up or ragged when there are Duties undischarged.

Duties to Love on a neighbor or brother, sister. Duties to respond in Alacrity, to the harsh word or stark Flag-Plant. The flag planted, this is ours to Mean Something with: we mean the world with the stars and stripes, with the lamb that was slain, with the pesci fish silhouette. We mean: healthsome Rigor, healthsome Duty, healthsome Readiness for the warring hour. A readiness unappreciated, scorned, denied, and ostracised but: nonetheless Here and Now, the long years doing who-knows-what: it was all Prayer Time, and consecrated seating in the coffee shop of the saints. Who knows but that it was for this Hour we were fashioned in the womb of prospect, of production, of purpose. Who knows… but that we strike while we are thus Enabled by our own freedoms, healed by our own Christs and Healers, set in antimony by our own drill-sergeants and commanders-in-chief. Think of the Jubilee, or the Celebration when it is concluded: hey, we are not so different after all. Nothing you say… it isn’t quite so Foreign to me, after all. Take the Kool-Aid and the mind trip, not from any substance illicit or otherwise, but from Educated thinking outside the box. Consult: with the doomsday prophet or the frustrating pundit. Be ready, because War for the Message is hastening faster than we can disperse like the disciples Jesus sent out in pairs. Still, theirs shall be the final storyline. Because Theirs… it was God who consecrated, God who imbued with Purpose, God who said to leave family and hearth behind, for the greater upward calling of Him in Christ Jesus.