2023-08-23 A Meditation on Genuine Experience

“12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you. 15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Co 1:12–22 ESV)

The range from able-bodily being ministered to, loved on, satisfied and all things apropos to the circumstances, ranges widely to the alternate human experiences. Experience ranges, and the Gospel is always understood as a response to a certain type of experience. For example, the experience of failure, of having failed to seize the moment and say “I love you”. The experience of wishing for a second chance to ask… for a second chance. The frightening dreamscape wherein we for once “get” someone… and do feel so far away, as far as concerns our own tactics in speaking to them. We aren’t quite loved. We aren’t quite getting the geld. We aren’t quite getting the generous and patronizing love.

For to love us is always perhaps a bit patronizing. We should be stronger. We envision a world where, provided God is for us, what can go against us? Yet again, the situation calls for a check-in: where, today, is this one spiritually? Washed by the blood? Saved by the Grace? Floating along in a river of good tidings? Mesmerized by the promise of Tomorrow?

To be loved is to be accepted as somewhat up to the challenge of life upon life, but only somewhat. It is to find someone for whom the exchange is not quantified and billed. It is that unidirectional Service: God serves us up via these His people and prophets and ministers. The friend who has found new excitement in life, and is asked to see us as banal and fallen on harder times, is a friend with deeper-set loyalties perhaps. Such loyalties are the reason for the season, the cause for the celebration, the motivation for the momentum.

Therefore we are attuned to that inner longing, that gap, that sense of futility or… that question mark over the affair that we awaken to, from our seance or our dream, from our meditation or our trance, from our simple requests vocalized or our listening appeal to the Most High. We begin to reside halfway: not quite despondent, but gosh a little frightened that we are too needful of an embrace or a pick-me-up, even upon knowing and having illustrated the motivation and the principle, the duty and the call.

So Jesus deals with genuine brokenness, with things having no pat and complemented solution. He is not simply filling in the gaps in our efforts, but rather begins by approaching when there are no solutions on the shelves. He then patches up in hasty but method manner. He reassures us of a meaning to the Spirit of our time. Our time on Earth is meaningful and invitation to dwell in that embrace or that receptivity unto Love. We abide in a Game Complete, victory ours precisely because it is genuine angst and circumstance that He responds to. Genuine regret or reliving of the romance past or the friendship past, the memories a stronger bedrock than any theoretical words. So we find Christ in our “scene”, our friends network, our family record, our church day of little things. We can then report as to our location: “Washed in the blood”; “Loved by the Lord”; “Walking in time with Grace”.