2023-08-17 A Meditation on Inspiration
“2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:1-11 ESV)
The mettle of a soldier is not resolved, procured, by throwing more resources at the problem. Mettle is a subtle matter; it is groomed in gentler climes and informed by hard-won insight. We believe that coming to inspiration, some prophetic voices are minting wealth, full of inspiration, knowing as to how to inspire and strengthen, lessons in snappy or devilish demons that wail against the sanity of the soldier. Demons which mutter, “Hate you”, “You can’t”, “Give up”, or some such devilish brew.
The faucet, the oasis, inspired, On, belabors point upon point that mettle is a subtle brew. Good citizenship, by way of analogy, teaches us no longer to seek similarities so much as to recognize genius and oblong, strange, character streaks. People are divine bundles of sainthood and humanity, of weird discovered fruits alongside honesty about one’s human tendencies.
Similarly, the good militancy recognizes a War within, a spiritual playing field, complete with said demons and said Jesuses (that is, exorcists: people strangely empowered against the demons). Good citizenship in a fighting brood means accepting authority inspired and endowed, leading to that sense of being healed precisely because we witnessed the peaceful show of force. The benign reminder of force heals and fixes up the soldier, who ricochets about the place looking for some guiding light. That is, to see a potential fighting spirit, is to heal and to reflect on what inspired recollection, reaction, sanity as to all the temptations of power, does enable us personally to quietly contribute. Respect those in authority, says Scripture (1 Pe 2:13).
Therefore the guiding light is a dusk-to-dawn assignment, yet still with “down time” or “time of reflection”, or “labors conducive to praying alongside them”. We aren’t going blotto on the self in this army. We aren’t erasing our integrity and self-identified personhood. We can’t escape the personal temptations to self-hate or to brush with demons who mock and who chastise. No, our work output is coincidental with our thought peace. We are good militants for the Lord because we’ve found our good deeds do begin to spell some nod in the direction of where our hearts today find rest. We are good militants for the Lord because we are not ashamed nor self-destructive of our own Calling and Duty. Duty to kin and to peer, to child and to aged. Duty to work out a spiritual casus belli, some call the Gospel, some call Law and Gospel, some call simply knowing thyself. Know thyself in the light of a God yes of morality, but who understands that progress on the moral front comes about through unconditionally sincere and genuine Love. So each finds their role in that Law and Gospel dynamic. And the unwinding of a possessed, unhealed, crew, does beckon for us to pray for our enemy, who may be strong in brawn but weak in copacetic Spirit, towards whom we—oppressed but headstrong in love—pray and act the bigger Man towards.
It will be a winning day when a curmudgeonly and aghast, offended and exasperated enemy does the honor of calling us no longer an uninteresting would-be ally but a foe. It will be a spiritual war already underway, yet this day made potable to a wider masses. It will be our own dignity of purpose: we are operating on honor and on patience, to heal our own compromised communities. That is our war. To begin to find visible manifestations of those dear things held out to us in faith in the unseen. So long unseen. So much suffering and dying. But today the first inklings that reassure and compose the soldier, to know his or her leading voice is not lost. That soldier is an inspired agent, a zealous change operative, one longing for the pure and the exorcized, for some future day when the fight is engaged yet principled, and the talons are met yet procured from their place of trust.