2023-11-08 A Meditation on Inner Calm

“29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” (Ro 2:29 ESV)

Call of duty, radical calm, peace between warring dispositions; the soldier’s fight begins within. Somehow the call to joy is a cat out of the bag; against this joy there is no law. There is no rule against blithely interpreting misery and hardship as though all were still occasion for tender smile. For a re-engagement with the people we call brethren, sistren; never for a moment using our faith as a license to guilt trip or to malign our peer.

The discovery of blank space known as Calling, this space is a ledger or tablet on which to write large. Any word from one Called and Consecrated, is a healthsome word. Their criticisms of us, these we take in stride, knowing somewhere and towards some people behind that facade is love.

The soldier’s fight is based in some level of learned submission, some level where we ceased to hold-tight to and covet the things we thought needful. That a greater boon might be leveraged our way: to have abnegated some things is to receive them back a hundredfold. Family and friends. Ministerial calling and personal religion. An oddity once upon a time now fitted to the game, to the pedestal, to the perch. Legions of sinful spooks have come out of us; there is now a chasm wide and deep, between who we are in the Lord, and whom we once were.

There is now an invincibility that calls us always to remember and dwell near that cusp. The cusp of physical bodily pain. The cusp of spiritual torment lending, leaning into calm. Fruitful calm the word and healthsome life the re-invitation: there was a time you denied me; will you this day take on the mantle?

That mantle inspires each soldier in personal fashion, to see the insanity of walking around with a sword and shield, a gun and a vest; and, no stranger to the insanity called life, to flourish. Thriving in the peace overtures, and in the shots over our respective heads, not stuck in mourning for what war shall come, but warmed up and ready to make the unsure stand or question of whose victory it shall be, into our dwelling-place. The victory is ours if we this day don’t deny Christ. The victory is ours if we accept all the courageous words of old, the dying thief saving his own soul on the cross by acknowledging Christ’s righteousness. The martyrs of reforming times, on both Catholic and Protestant sides, burned at the stake but screaming that today they shall be feasting in paradise.

No, for some martyrdom comes too easy, too ready and spacious our acceptance of the call to die. Instead know too God tests us in our willingness, but overall longs for our frame to surpass that of His Christ. To live into the debacle, the warring day’s newsreel. To honor one life that we might honor all lives. To know a level of submission unto a Christ who calls us to live on, fight on amidst all insanity, pray on. That we might know steady walk, march, through what once deceived us or depressed us or rigged itself up as a reality we should have rejected. Hidden is our new reality, that calls us to put aside simple habits, and focus just on that habitual living for ulterior motives of an ulterior Man called Christ. So the horizon is ours to choose this day, whether antsy scrolling and browsing, or a self-coached calm. We need sustenance, and find it in lame and paupers’ ways. But too we can get by spending the day in prayer. This we do, knowing the chasm is wide and deep, and that our war is already won.