2024-09-19 A Meditation on Flourishing

“19 When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. 20 For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt 10:18-20 ESV)

Surrounded by prayer, the basic cadet faces decisions not anywhere near as simple as one would expect; or, sometimes the decisions are indeed simple, to a fault. Too clever by a mile, some options land on our desk, in our locker room, at morning meal, and we are already committed, already on board, it just “fits”. But strange and mighty are God’s ways: the correct decision, how are we to differentiate, when we don’t know the back story? How, when each side portrays humans, yes, flourishing?

Or do they? Is it an act therapeutic? Is it healing? Is there, after all, hope? Whose job is it to mind others, in some beleaguered and intrusive manner? Yet for us, we count it all joy that we were destined to make the Good Call. It was no moment of rational choice, but a choice, a cohort long known, a familiar hearth made, a congenial troop glad happily saluted.

That is, we plead in any case: present me with the facts and let me speak in my defense. But no, this is war, and in war the impetus, the shove, the push, is relentless. We cannot take a breather. We plead for a sanity check against all odds. We have to realize it was some decision made for us, on our parent’s knee, infant baptized perhaps, that acclimated us, prepared us, for yes that decisive day that in hindsight we thank God for, but do not claim ourselves to have been so Sage, so All-Knowing, so Soothsayer Mentalist about.

We were not Clever. We were not Judiciously Choosing; rather, it just “came about”, “felt right”, “leaned upon our smarts”. For, smart or stupid as we may fashion ourselves, each of us has true Mentalist Power, to assess and to discern. And the hopeful “side”, the “Decision made”, the room for “Growth”; all this, we gladsomely announce and celebrate.

So it is a call for the soldier to be more self-composed and self-confident, not less, to corral any and all supervening spirits as being ones we literally are to Master. We are to teach our tools and honor our religious notions such as parents and elders and scriptures, all in service of letting our beasts of technological burden, our arms and weapons of war, lead and predict, but only as under bit and bridle called Flourishing, Peace. No human trafficking or submission to the capitalist making a buck off of another’s indentured servitude; no, rather some inkling made in faith, the faith that states that some Hint is present, as to whose side is Hope Filled, whose side Trusting, Expansive, Breeding Ground. This is no self-congratulatory pat on the back, but a call to acknowledge the utter Mystery as to how and why we are judged worthy of Salvation. And we believe ourselves to be judged worthy of salvation.

The Lamb who was sacrificed: this Lamb prophesied over and earned for us a Legacy unwritten but rather written on human hearts, of a Tomorrow and a Corner Turned, unknown, eagerly hoped for and anticipated, trusted in, amidst a world gone mad on power and frightful stories of hegemony and abuse. We were those at one time fixated on the murderous ways of our society, but now live into that Hope, unknown, unmastered, that is, not serving a known outcome and purpose but rather without societal hierarchy and “rank”, each citizen gladly welcomed to Thrive. And it is a scary outcome, because of that loss of control. But it puts to rest any and all hurt, any and all threat, any and all concessions made to the tyrant or to the panicked smooth-talker. It is something we are grateful for, yet cannot claim to have earned. It was earned for us by Someone who showed a mind-melding way forward: learn from me, He said. Do as I do, he proclaimed.

Each of us perhaps needs a bit of that Kool-Aid that shows us humbled in the mind of our adversary, so we understand: they need healing as well as we do. We after all may be an ugly thumb in “their” mix, an interposed Spirit who is unwelcome. But there is a way and a means for all to thrive in community. There is something of that Decision, that we were after all destined to make when the time was right: be on the precipice of self-sacrificial gifting. All we had to do is take a moment to reassure ourselves: ready we are, primed we have been since that Baptism, to know and to assert as though it were plain for all to see, that Christ is for us and we, we His people have chosen the good portion, that will not be taken from us.