“5 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Cor 5:1-10 ESV)

Milder climates, we seek them but today’s mission is still loud and clear: to testify, to brandish a weapon tried and true, to be guided by the light of received Wisdom, Scripture, call-and-response Prayer. What once was elusive, today is on the waiting dock, in our courtyard, the shared courtyard of people in this together: we are on mission and we are Discovering truths about ourselves and about Overcoming.

To overcome is speak a message not glib nor oblivious to Pain in our lives. Sickly, frustrated, guilt-ridden, questioning, we wish at times that all hours of our lives were so Informed and Sympathetic… to the suffering one, to the compromised ones, to the struck hard on the eve of shining forth. Shining forth because of Tomorrow’s war. Shining forth because of a lampstand entrusted for us to bear. We bear the lampstand and we take our place in the contingent.

And God’s own experience… this is just as relevant today as back in Jesus’ time: that the status quo faces pretenders and falsity; that we are perhaps those Blessed for our little sphere, but that overall the social gravity, the tendency, is to falsity and to follow a weird Lark. We ourselves follow a heavensent light, a Spirit who carries, holds close, rewards and disciplines. But the falsity, the Decision, is just as stark Today as it was in Jesus’ time. That entire legitimacies are Invented on the basis of a false confidence, only when this falsity is realized, look: the structures, falsely founded, have—too late—been spoken into existence.

Some kind of genius, then, is our humbler assessment of the Enemy. Some kind of thing greater than we ourselves, is the Enemy’s Mind. Yet we do know this, that to merge and to coalesce, to fight and to repudiate, we are stronger for the wear and closer to Christ now than when we first believed. We are, after all, Received into His Courts not on the basis of our ascendancy but on the basis of Him looking around for a friend or two. 

We do, perhaps, have this to bring to the table: meekly, this, that we are in Need of that Friend we ourselves. We also. We need Him to save us from ourselves, from the weird assessment of “Where have the years gone?”. From the longing for milder climate, but the honesty that just as we weaken or seem to flail, precisely then is our Hour to rise up and to shine.