“9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” (1 Thess 4:9-12 ESV)

The stream of consciousness Correct, this gestates from the experience of problem resolution. We sally forth Correct, and the striking fact too is that we venture forth with the electricity in the air: militant for all the crazed lesser features; what we call Crazy is, in the full light of day, in the recruiter’s mandate heard, in fact not crazy but Duty.

The safe haven of a time in life a bit excited, a time a bit productive, a time a bit electrical, the city streets There and Real, humming with life, the friends’ greeting a matter of all of us getting down to the business around here, some “business”, the tested friendship that is curious when we fall away, that pursues when we go extreme, that wonders when we break up or create faultlines.

The business around here is now to accept precise Correctness insofar as we don’t punish ourselves throughout the day with unkempt thoughts, with forgetfulness of just who and how much we have going for us. Our madness, our crazed cock-eyed glance at life, this finds outlet and thorough utilization, in a cohort or a team on the front lines. We go calm under the pressure. We go sane under the music so loud. We concentrate under the rampant distraction. Because for this we were made. For this we were formed. For this the Spirit moved over the face of the water and said, “Man!”, “Woman!”. We can forgive ourselves for the denial of our comprehensive created nature. We denied: we thought to exterminate any vestige of our proud, God-given stand. We were programmed by a nefarious foe. We were uncertain and jaded, fault-lined and corrupted. 

The Encounter of someone else, someone besides ourselves, with the Christian Gospel, is a feat to observe. It is amazing, to see real mensch-like theology or atheism Encounter a real theological gift. It is amazing to see a principled stance on things religious, encounter the lived testimony of someone else, of ourselves. For, what we dismiss in the abstract, in the classroom of religion, we learn to accept and accommodate in a friend. We are reminded of heavy judgments for our sins, but those being loving judgments. That we all agree around here on a Justice and sense of personal Involvement, Duty to one another. To the cohort, to the team. All this to say, life is a bit more warm and a bit more like cutting through some fabric most heavy but loving, most real but spiritual, most shared but personal.

Whether in wartime or in peace, our safe havens buzz with electrical Truth. They are True, though we are searching. They are the friendship just formed, hastily consummated with a date on the streets or in the nightclub or on the bus. The reason for the season of Christ, for His resurrection, for His celebration of life, is not lost to the ravages of time: we were, after all, with militant efficiency, fighting through it all, and we counted on plain loving people who loved for the sake of love itself. Tomorrow and its fears, they should be met with love Today. That the war is already waged, and strangely a sort of Enemy might even today be rooting for the good guys: because all of us can fight together around things Discovered in the discipleship, in the crew reflection, in the economy of better Opportunity and Efficiency for all.

The Courage, then, it can come any day. Individual decisions of individual people, these save a nation. Teetering always, history is written in the strange corners and early prophecies, wars already fought and now repairing from, whilst the more general public is just on the early days. That is, no presumption to fight without license, we nonetheless are Encouraged to do what is Forbidden, to plant a flag, to do something that invites opprobrium, the hounds of hell chasing us down. Because we loved to the end. We loved because it is all we knew, that others took a look in our direction and decided to invest Love, discipline, embrace, a reckless confidence in things intangible. This we do for each other. This we do, because it is all systems go when truly discipled, no time to hem and haw, no time to hedge our bets: we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, Today, in Today’s crew blessing, in Today’s compact made and promise formed, in Today’s pain realized and spoken through. It will be like Today when Tomorrow comes, like Today’s militancy around things held dear, the spiritual, the heartfelt, the wild-eyed Dream. We are crazy for God, and soothe into a rhythm and rhyme, a cadence and chord, when finally acknowledging the crazy nature of life and its bargains. Then we are normal and fighting and of good cheer. Then we can be the certain and sure spirit to our peers, because we did not indulge the boredom nor the lack of a fight. We found something to fight for, and this was Christ for His people, for us, for our friend who doesn’t know Him, and for a general enemy or general public rubbing their eyes at day’s first light.