“2 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. 3 Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. 5 An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. 6 It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. 7 Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. 8 Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. 11 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 12  if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; 13  if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Tim 2:1-13 ESV)

True grit, the things we are deprived of, yes, but true grit is the fact our soldiering impulse finds outlet in enlisting: so many vagaries and bland accoutrements of wealth, now cease to distract or haunt or lead falsely. We easily are made sublime around a new kind of Wealth: blessed are the birds of the air and the trees in root, the cheerful forest wildlife and plains steed. Who have no worries, and like the soldier in his laughing, prayer circle around the campfire, we are both anticipating some Tomorrow Blessing, some thing we look forward to, and are Today pinching ourselves: I have arrived! This was, after all, what I anticipated and wanted! So graceful not to have Worries or blinders, not to have enigmas and widely blockading Concerns.

Because already sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice was made on our behalf, and even yet, the Master’s inclination to disappear into the sunset, to disperse into a mist then nothing, to leave with a riotously well-humored Nothing and No Import trading token. A sign. A deliverance from the haunted house nature of our token items or our token ideations, the things our parents’ generations failed in and that we therefore are pressured, with an impossible-to-fulfill pressure, to live into and carry out.

So to the Prize, that we of all people speak Grace to the assembly, a parent or guardian’s wisdom that they shall forever speak the half-and-half, Law and Gospel, that we might have a clean slate and freedom to Roam, to deuce and fake-out any Spy or Observer with what is hidden in plain sight: we, for Him; we, in the broad Crowd; we, no longer hindered by that covetousness that accompanies wealth (see the poor person the first to give away what little they have); we, after all a fake-out, duck-out, Movement of prayer, always marry the new blood, always honor the working class if your of a more stately class; always look for New Inspiration.

To the soldier’s lair, then, and find little of holding value, little to safeguard except that as a Token it once meant something to someone. To the Fact of sublime Meaning and Encouragement as found in the enlistment papers, a freedom via submission and via service, a boredom averted, yet too that no earthly Vocation can completely fulfill; always we will look for a Tomorrow, and as warriors always to the Front Lines. Because to engage a groove, is suddenly to worry and say, “should have done this and more ten years ago…”; that is only a sign over and against the Malaise, the Milieu of the People Gathered, who never themselves even encounter the Regret, only motor along in blissful ignorance of what Hell and Trials will descend on Judgment Day.

Many will be saved, but already the Tokens are in place, the Decisions somehow… poetically? Somehow effected by a shark’s move on behalf of an unknowing but now damned State or Populace, except for those Heroes therein who somehow mysteriously Overcome the blase false assurance, assurance that says Salvation is an easy thing. It is Easy to those following Jesus, but to those already damned, the broadly-understood middle class, the false comfort and ethics appeased by ritual unappreciated by the Ruler, false tokens and false deeds, these are like treading water unto futility, like trying to get a footing on an uphill jaunt, like trying to surmount a hill in a fated dream. A hill never in fact surmounted.

God is for us, and we are custodians—nothing more—of an Inheritance no longer old and haunted but new in each generation, to discover some peace in service, some sanguine health in frontline camping out, on the battlefield, at the market or town center, Encouraged by the no longer false memories or true memories of Sin, but unsuggestible, patiently Overcoming what deeds past do still Damn… in memory, if not yet accepted by our heart of hearts, Christ’s atoning sacrifice made for us.