2025-04-15 A Meditation on God Patient

“12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. 14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16 gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. 17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”” (Joel 2:12-17 ESV)

God’s fidelity to remind us and mitigate our good works in styles humble, Jonah-like hilarity, wild tangents and game day proof that the battle is the Lord’s, and we are His people: a fidelity welcome though mocking our fragile little ecosystems, persistent though we want to say “I got this”, decisive though we always are asking for an extension; this is the self now better Aware, the retrospective Maddening though somehow still Held in His arms, Unique to our person though it seems He puts too much trust and faith in us, as individuals, at times.

Rampant tears, tearing, ripped fragile ecosystems: what we set out to accomplish with said ecosystem was our sense of Duty, of Submission, of “Just me and my little world” so humble it may seem, but God is no respecter of persons nor dilettante: He prefers to have us sinners contrite than perfect little ecosystems, however modest, however precious, however precocious. That is, God works with those who have learned a boot-camp style of leaning in on their brothers, their sisters, their comrades in arms, leaning in on His authority… and yet, no we can’t do so until we’ve proven ourselves, until we established safety nets, until we’ve rebuilt our little fragile ecosystem.

He wants tigers. He wants outlandishly bold Reaction to the status fact, update, that Man is low, low, low as far as his or her self-righteousness, and high, high, high as far as being puppets or marionettes in the hands of a Higher Power. Today, it is ample daytime and sunlight for a preemptive strike against our own fragility, our own sense of just biding the time innocent and weak. The prophet, those such as Christ traced His own lineage through, His spiritual lineage, is constantly upsetting the apple cart, and wild-eyed having seen the Wilderness demonology, ontology of spirits, Call this day to Die. We, who are about to Die… we ask only that a blip on the radar represent Christ Encountering our spirit, and then we flail or sparkle or thrust or go on diatribe in every which direction.

Whatever I’ve said that is True, hold fast to that, and whatever I’ve said that reeked of self-absorption, please just forget it, says the lit up one. It is no cause for discouragement, that we are Tried and Forged in a furnace. It is no cause for sadness, that we bring All to the altar, our inheritance, our mullah, our respectability, our patently cogent way of just doing things ‘round here. Formed and reformed, we are game day Ready, blessing the Spiritual Advancement, moving forward of the battle lines drawn, of All things past, present, future, being in service of Christ’s cause. All our friendships—even those with hurt. All our trials—even those that bedevil. All our patient listening, and bold advances—even those that we felt not yet ready for. Make mistakes! Land in Holy arms most urgent, fasted, benign, yet militaristic. They are arms intending to brush us up a bit only then all that in service or returning us to the Cause, to the Battle Waged, to His victorious onslaught in this the Church Militant phase of the storyline.