2024-01-25 A Meditation on Imagined Calm

2 Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4 I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. 5 For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. 8 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. 9 As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.” (2 Co 7:2-9 ESV)

What never rightly assesses our spiritual condition is a forced calm. To weigh our success on the spiritual front by how sensible and coherent we are, is to lose sight of a battle ongoing. That a little more patience might bide us over through the temptation. That some austerity might tide us over through the blase or the tired, the lackluster moments of pause. For to be all-on is to be in some measure hurt by life. It is in some measure to have a right dread or right spirit of competition, to have a right spirit of untold worth found in an edifice, a mountain, chipped away at. We chip away. We do delight, thanks for the gift, in the labors, after for once we’ve found our way through the mediocrity and the personal lack of zen at times.

So to the odd habit or invented need; we are not so much as sobered as we are made patient, to survive the winnowing times with a firm mindset: this is war. This is an occasion to cease to think anything in life is smooth sailing, if for once we’ve correctly placed our affections, our labors, our duty, unto some personality and calling. Still we have the hour of dread. Still we have the addictions to be… what? To be mindful of, is easy to say, but in fact it is to count each hour a gift, no prescription so much as a sense of defeat, to bring all to the altar of our God.

And why, then, should we fuss around our day’s work? Is it not a battle with outward appearances versus inward turmoil? Is it not radical notions put into play, of Man’s font of inspiration, or this versus the alternate labors, callings that chip away, that reach no perfect end but rather humble us? The pastor’s calling is to be dwellers of a certain heaven, yet is this a cop-out or a hastily-made avoidance? Are we avoiding the more sincere efforts, or is our daily fight—to be hard-working; to be laborers while the sun still shines; to put in an honest day’s purpose—something calling for a reassessment: we were happy as prayer-warriors. We felt camaraderie and purpose as those who were diligent and perspicacious, who put in the honest heaven-dweller’s thankfulness and celebration. Yet instead, come holy spirit come, we can sit down and do more. It feels we can add onto our license and our resolve in this life.

Therefore the sad fact of looking elsewhere, the hard news of each Man, Woman, his or her field to cultivate; we are granted some things as a precarious preventative of ennui and of the devil’s workshop, boredom.