2023-10-12 A Meditation on Lent Unto the Lord’s Business

“17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, 18 of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. 20 By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. 21 By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. 22 By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. 23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. 24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. 27 By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.” (Heb 11:17–28 ESV)

What tasks we loan ourselves to, major are the headwinds, strong the spirits of guilt or of selfish monasticism. We hide out. Yet too we present ourselves as living members, busy about the Lord’s business. Our military mindset is not anything to mourn as lost, our readiness not anything to pass up as belonging to another era or another person. Amazingly tests, trials, wondrous possibilities, from these we emerge intact and the better for the labors. After all, we were rightly trained, right? We went through the basic training with concomitant professional reminder of what the professional walks through, men and women, men and men, women and women, all the more so as chatter increases and war is joined: see here, a specimen of either noble riches or of depraved losses.

And we immediately try to pass all that graduation celebration and test passed as so much water under the bridge. We must never lose contact with the time we were, for a moment, floored by temptation. The time when it seemed impossible for an impossible force to meet with an immovable object. The time we were cloudy-headed, the time temptation lured and enticed and lied to us, as to what is the proper person’s prayer and the right person’s sense of circumspect presence in the party of so many souls themselves Real and Composed.

Let the spirit of Love prevail, regardless of our men, our women, who cannot so indulge a momentary idyll or a quiet certainty amidst the storms of war. There is no idyll. The spirit in the air knows it is war we are engaged in, and this spirit lies to us. It presents first an impossible scenario, no way to understand how we’ll ever survive and get through it. Then it turns all this topsy-turvy and causes us to gesture with a look heavenward. I needed help. The drugs had gotten to be too much. I was making myself useless in that fundamental role I was consigned to, soldier. That role that I signed up for. That role that I sought with hope to make many-a friend and colleague in the service, but most of all to be that awkward perhaps and blaringly plain, naked, soul composed and circumspect. It is our duty to wait as the billowing stormwinds pass, as the sails of lust start to luff and all seems so much beneath us. All seems a little too easy to dismiss and forget.

For our trials remind us of so much we live through and so much that we are steered by, rather than by the Spirit of Christ. Passion for career advancement. Anger. Selfish desire. A rabbit hole of temptation. And too we see the ill spirit killed in an instant, with a word in season: let us teach each other mutually, to pray. Boring! But let us envision a future, a tomorrow with salutary kindness for the neighbor and the friend. With recollection of those whom we must not let down, our circle of friends, our teammates and fellow soldiers. For they are present with us, as so much good counsel and life experience. Aged experience, the beauty of what two minds, each in itself innovative and unique, can get up to together. The solemn decision to be about the business, to hear and to discern, to pray and to live into fellowship.