2024-06-30 A Meditation on Largesse

“31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Ro 8:31-39 ESV)

Going to war on the basis of things we hold dear, it means the end of our latitude, of our gregariousness, of our willing Positivity and Optimism: the end of our self-suspicious deliberations and duties discharged, the end of our attempts to reconcile, not because we haven’t the time or the willingness, but because we have come to believe in Fact, in Endings, in New Beginnings.

Some, come war, are found in compromised haunts, yet no matter for the one whose heart is willing: especially for such as these, the reality is of Divine Mercy from Him who loved us. So those taking pause, those discomfited for the knowledge of their own waywardness, these are precisely whom Jesus wants to work with.

And the celebration: this must go on. We are not the guilty party for the fact of facing Discord, but rather it is the subject of Scripture, that Man, Woman, are mostly in a state compromised, bleary-eyed, impossible, and yet also that Man, Woman, has her or his Oases of a little unction or respite. The celebration must inform the battlelines: we who—not who have fasted the most or done the most good deeds—we who have received from His Hand, mercy and grace, are primed for the big league show. We have a zeal for life again, knowing how precious is our own self-hatred or self-incrimination or desire for the One Day to become the Now. What shall happen one day shall Inform and Encourage our Now.

And then the Ideal Upheld: that a sin-free man was here in our midst, and by His eyes shall we see the battlelines drawn; by His fast shall we receive Divine Wisdom or Insight; by His frights and comforts shall we learn of true Fallenness in a competitor or enemy, but also within our own ranks. Nothing is certain except that He works on a timetable of Mercy rather than of sinlessness; so we uphold the paradox: man, woman newly out of the confessional, is just as capable and ready to Decide War as man, woman newly out of the long fast or sinless life.

For life is never sinless. Life is called in view of Jesus to mock and laugh away all temptations to adjudicate matters on the basis of good deeds or good morals or good stock. We are unaware of the blessings incumbent in our good stock or breed or education or principles or experience, and this innocence spells for us a giving nature that holds nothing back, willing to take up the offer of the first annoying street-person who asks of us.

We all have been that street-person when it comes to Christ: He sees the world and pays no reverence to the cozy or comfortably situated. We need be humble about our street-level wayward or unblessed, or needy, or unsatisfied, or unfed Humility. Yes, because we steel ourselves for a bleary world that understands not, but when meeting Christ all of a sudden we find ourselves weaker and supplicant, at least in some manner of His meeting us where we hurt or dare to be vulnerable.

So our war is an end to the plain thought that all exploration or contemplation or experimentation is happily discussed; people have stands that emote knowledge of a Devil most real. People listen for wise words or counsel that deadens this Devil. People arrange their fellowship in terms Aware and Cognisant of an Evil Way to be avoided. In all these things we are more than conquerors, unashamed of the winning side called Gospel, called Evangel, called Togetherness.