2025-02-26 A Meditation on Eternities
“6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:6-16 ESV)
Long lost times aeons, the misconstrual or false togetherness, aeons of Owned Reality: we are not, after all, marching a solemn course unto our dying day as though each day were rightly assessed and measured. We are, after all, part Eternal, and have stock, ownership, in the Aeons. We have dutiful sense around that basic Religious question mark: who is “Called”? Called to the ministry? Called to the prayer warrior stance? Called to haze the wild alternative lifestyles and job descriptions: these do no contention with the Christian Calling. We are found Sincere, and Sincerity spells methodology sublime, spells Outlay, Prospects, Purchase of Spiritual Estate. Spiritual Wealth. Spiritual Wild random thought patterns, the soldier living in a strange Alternate Universe.
Because this universe… this one was too tame, too methodologically explained away, too sequential and with far too many “parables” originating in our one-half physics or our mathematics. That is, the right notions, these are the other half, that Science helps Explain, with notions of conjoined particles or big band Creationism, reasoned Proof and Incompleteness, magic that the early Fathers didn’t have and which their efforts at story-telling did not obtain inspiration from.
The soldier’s mindset, then, has no level playing field except insofar as there is Purchase and Momentum even as he or she heads into the judgment days, called to judge others—not “others”, but the actions of others—and in this being not tempted by fashion, rather by Group Mentalism and Focus Points.
The soldier lives and breathes a doctrine no less “Insane” than scientism or rationality. The reason we lean towards the latter is not because they are “sensible” whereas faith is “illogical”, rather it is because of Satan, the Tempter, God’s plan was actually quite kosher and no less radical. To hearken to a Song, to a thought process Redeemed, to frontal full Exposed Plainness, and Need met. We would love to live and die in the Moment, in the All-On mentalism, in the Encounter… however, life distracts, depresses, frustrates, no spirit conceded unto, that. But a spirit we know dispels and is revealed empty-handed and lost, when once we’ve Encountered our Lord who walked with us, who gave us a zealot’s Righteous Cause, who made us sadly Bored with the humdrum daily routines, because we longed to fight the good fight always. And thus we do.
To be “Called” is to have a startling personal War with no time to fuss or delay. It is sadly to warm to the assessment: sin is still ours, owned. But also therein to accept a no nonsense Crux and Measure, the Cross of Christ, the beleaguered Prophet, the walk on the side called Redeemed. We warm to, we glimpse distantly, something come present here and now, that our Missionology is a doctrine secret—for others would only attack and dismiss it—yet we Plead and Yearn to be understood. In the homestead of a sister or a brother in the Faith. That we are not, after all, immune by long tradition, from Failure, rather we are prone to Resurrection Constantly: from the failure to be fashionable and poised. From the failure to be a proper middling Presence. We are Starkly present. We are conveying Creed most sublime. We are hoping Lifestyle most pugnacious. Repugnant to some, but to us, our days and years they Testify via the distant gaze and the far-off Hope.