2024-09-12 A Meditation on Finding a Path Forward
“5 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Cor 5:1-10 ESV)
Finding oxygen is some product of a topsy-turvy world: we believe in widespread meldings of minds, of group’s at thought, of a choreography that points to, that evokes, that surrounds and honors, a point of no return. A point of here-we-stand in the spirit. A point of the latches unhitching or hitching and vast turntables of life scratching, spinning, doing the Lord’s work so new to so many.
To so many so vastly different from the surface meaning and polled assessments, the sense of checking in that concluded: we can yawningly count these a conquest, a non-able party, ones unable to defend themselves if we really get down to it.
Yet the gospel promises new sight, oxygen, a living place to dwell each and every new day: today, with thoughts of coming together, the shared domiciles of the spirit, houses of worship gladsomely exchanged. That is, the Gospel promises a strange peacetime Encounter, where we struggle at times even to remember how that former and other half lives. What is on their mind. What trials we have found God hides us from in the cleft of the rock. What habitual behaviors have bookmarked us personally, but also what Tomorrow Sight wakes up to a new para-organizational affiliation: all of us bringing some basic stuff to the equation, but meeting in a higher-up parasol, under those wings, brought to mind of zany Oxygen so precious.
The oxygen of a Christ mending first here and then there, you are welcome to camp out in our encampment; you are bearing up under the load by dropping all things and joining the symphony of the group at prayer. Yes, and all this because a Personal Genesis, or Creation stage of life, a conversion story, a moment of penitence, introduces to the equation the pathways thus etched, the intro as it rolls in the film, the credits that reflect upon what we just saw. All this is to remember: life is not so droll and pedantic as we imagine; our place in the community is not accidental or impermanent: every moment facial expressions and murmured blessings or observations, do create a symphony of Who and Why we personally Are. We are the sum of many things, and too there is much that the community gets right: places of worship, places of employment, places of restful community, places of education for the youth, and places of lawful considerations. That is, the doctrine that all are in sin, meets the doctrine of Saved by Grace, prevenient grace as it is called, making hay while the sun shines, that being the hay of accidentally—despite our sinful core—lifting holy hands to work and to shape and to build.