A Meditation on Harrowing Revision

2024-09-08 A Meditation on Harrowing Revision

“3 Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, 2 and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, 3 that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. 4 For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. 5 For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.” (1 Thess. 3:1-5 ESV)

Question as to what regrets might we have that day when the battle is raging on all sides, and we—secluded, quieted but for the bomb bursts, brought to mind of little and of much—revel both in what demands we could have been more copacetic around, and in what non-negotiables after all do matter to us. Do make a difference. Do stun us, to learn they are not to be taken for granted. Nothing is to be taken for granted. And too, the mild recollections—prompted by a friend of old, or a friend new—of a “language” we once knew, a language of hopes and cares, fears and composures, sass and timidity. All this, and the news that our passing unto the next stage, unto Life version Two, Afterlife and Survival cohort, is after all painless and something we were meant for, as the blood vacates our pulsating limbs and mind and soul.

Somehow in this there was a key mystical takeaway: something that spelt Sagacious Knowledge, Intent, Purpose, Drive, and secluded us away from the common mankind as those Knowledgeable and Intent. We negotiated under the rubric of war games, as to what exactly were our tactics and non-negotiables, as if an enemy had made fifty percent of the road unto all-war modality. We tried. But all this, and the waking dream as to the fact: tomorrow shall be our people; something Survives, our hope and our Inheritance of the Savior’s Company. The Savior’s steel-eyed gaze—our steel-eyed gaze—above the dying Man just beneath our line of sight, a dying soul both underprepared and composed, calm yet panicky, but we… we gaze in lightness of being, that Christ’s—our dying friend’s—death is all-meaningful as a reminder only One needed die, only One to remind us of that game between friends of chess or poker, resulted in this Life-Affirming sacrifice, so we could see Eternal Life in the Resurrection.

The soldier, then, rests in the power of revising in hindsight, yet not cynically but with gladsome Fact: God is the planner, not us, and we cease then to prescribe a course of action to a would-be convert or new believer. We cease to explain just how our enemies domestic and abroad “should” be coming to light about. It will be on a different time scale, and will involve us imitating that Lord and God vis-a-vis literally needing to write ourselves out of the equation: to Die, to disappear, to languish in the refuse. God intends Conversion to all souls, but we cannot and should not say, “So-and-so, he or she should realize such-and-so…”

Ably proud, even the best war planners and peace planners can err in this regard, which is why the convert is not simply a brave or proud soul that gives to others freely: the convert knows themselves to be mortally in error, and totally depraved, and therefore cue the chimes and the melodies of Peace, of Getting Along, Fellowship, and Hope. We literally can spare the impetus to war—for, in the trenches there is a cry of “Why?”—and focus just on that Point of contention, that the soldiers may celebrate even in unison with their neighbors across the barbed wire and in the other trenches, celebrate Something of humor or levity around just what-all they have gotten up to.

Yet we are not boastful as to how clever we are, and we are firm around the bedrock principles, around the no-nonsense Resolve, to be God-fearing tribe, to sign our name in the Book of Life and not look back, to Testify even if it is so familiar: we being brought to mind of that nurturing womb of likes and dislikes, passions and dating, friendships and family, that raised us… what-all we’ve literally lost sight of and failed to recreate… which all gets us encouraged both to sally forth but also to fast, because we know for whom we are doing it. That is, if called to shed some unprepared pounds, okay. But if called to put life on the line, then yes indeed. Both are possible, in the rich blood of those who Care. No competition, to demands of this one’s or that one’s submission, but rather each of us servant-leaders. We already faced dying and despair and unremediated gift, and in this we each of us found after-life and two-point-oh.