2024-02-28 A Meditation on Getting By

“4 This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. 3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.” (1 Cor 4:1-5 ESV)

We try our best to live in mastery of our circumstances, to be people decisive and managing decisions well; yet between the existential awakening, the project or consequences we wake up to, there is a wide gulf. There is the demonstrated professionalism, alongside the honest revisionism, things we wish we could do differently.

It is a strange tale to see how little actual accounting or gratitude is expended in the direction of learning or deeds accomplished. The time put into a project, the matter-of-fact investment, the two sides to the coin: on the one hand an early ambition, but then a slow trawl, and fruits few and far between. Do we take a moment to say “Thank you!” for what—let’s be honest—is miraculous ownership? Miraculous exclusivity and things that make us special? Or dastardly appetite for a better use of our time past? Our times past, and our fruitless labors past?

Therefore the Christian’s power is in a perhaps hair-raising existentialism or contract: we have skirted the entire edifice, the entire meaning of life, the entire questionable motivation. We have made do with peanuts, or rather, with divine Manna from Above; depends on whom you ask! And all this by way of actual accounting undertaken, to assess if friends past, some faithful and longsuffering, others ephemeral and ambitious to move on, are in fact what we take them to be. We wonder, who is in our corner encouraging us. We wonder, whether there is any pride or pomp in reflecting on things accomplished, even in sad awareness that not all is peachy and sunny for tomorrow. We are no longer clamoring for more lived experience, more genuine hardship (if it might make us worthier to maintain a gospel imperative), no: these things are the tolerance threshold of the one carrying on. We carry on, because of strange comfort arising in the most unexpected places. We carry on because the Project is not edging us out in any personal fashion or targeting. We are no victims perhaps, but are in need of haste: the days are short, and the time is not lost if spent in prayer, in readying for the morrow, in simple assessment of how and what we might expect from this life, our own decisions no longer too scary to face.