“2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (James 1:2-18 ESV)

High morale is needed, because the life of Witness is way strange. First, long hours seemingly unengaged, yet like those tending a missionary outpost in a land that forbids evangelization, like those tending a forward-placed fort, a waystation largely watching innocence pass through its channel… these all Value and attest to the need for saints in the land. For workers. Of morale high and constantly reevaluating all things in light of that one basic confession: I am a work-in-progress; I have many needs for affirmation, way beyond reason; if only I could have faith in what is not seen…

Second, we invent reasons to scuttle ourselves. Learned long ago: never try and play chess with your Spiritual Overman, your Father in Heaven, your Lord and Maker, if by chess is meant “let me just fall into a mode called submission”. What chess we do play, is Christ’s decisions as human agent and provocateur, to see even the Abandonment by the Father as He lived out His wild hayride of death on a Cross. Yet still will I honor Him…

Our God in Heaven has not abandoned us. See, however, how quickly old habits return when we are no longer—again, requiring faith in the unseen—constantly held and talked over. See us mumble or complain or forget. Not believing, if He is absent in person for a moment, perhaps it is because a whole new Reality is being programmed, seven day creation indeed, that and so much more: eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God has in store for those who love Him and work according to His purpose.

The soldier’s innate drive, then, is to accept almost teamwork or fellow-traveler mentality with the High Drill Sergeant. We are to engage life as best we know how, making many mistakes, but not ever simply thinking that our Confession of Christ somehow makes us immune or perfect already. No, our confession simply matures the child within us, to begin a strange journey, full of long hours, full of perturbed worries, full of self-sabotage, full of blase “churchmanship” and a mind-bogglingly-insane congregation gathered in the church each Sunday.

The soldier’s innate drive is to Believe: this, too, shall pass. To Believe: agents, all, and fine ones at that; on a Mission straight from the top, to be the hands and the feet, the heart and the decisive mind in situ, as embedded, found in the wild, climes earthbound and familiar to this sort of embedded fellow or gal: who grew up “speaking the language”, the “social cues”, the “password for belonging”. Others hide out in safer office parks and departments; we are those Embedded and Frontline. Not because we have been judged unworthy, but because Christ set the example with His own “embedded” Incarnation, to drink deeply from rich wells of Humankind, messy, oblivious, obviously in error, obtuse, disengaged with principle and rule of law; unobservant, forgetful, capricious and set into a false motion along a falser river.

We drink deeply from these wells because God loved us in such a way as to meet us “uncool”, needing to bathe a bit in the spiritual realm, boring, even, boring to the would-be savior in each of us, who does approach. We approach, thinking to love on some folks, and end with banality and the messy, childlike hurts and needs of a lousy people. God loved us in the mess, and through the rather unsexy sins, the boring stuff, the need to be heard or hugged, the need to wallow a bit in our own familiar misery.