“3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf 8 and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. 9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Preeminence of Christ 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.” (Col 1:3-23 ESV)

The knowledge of how we are perceived… if pitied, we lose composure; if maligned, we self-doubt; if talked down to, we crumble. Yet the Justice and Judgment is God’s, and through ample means and channels He makes us stark opposites-thinkers to what “should be”. Indeed, the Justice Seat is His to foretell, to put forth, to welcome us to: our judgment shall be in deep respect that we live always on a Precipice, that it is never a given—some would call it a given—that we are abundant in Good Works rather than in malfeasance. Our Good Works, these ebb and flow, across an invisible Dividing Line that judges some simple showboating, others idolatry, and still others secretly enriching the doer with the illicit gains of their “deeds in so-called Christ”.

Yet walking by the Spirit, we are assured of a new beginning come the morrow, and are assured of a track record earned by Christ on our behalf: track record of simple goodness and plain goodness. Beautiful deeds, wrought in His semblance and His Person. No longer does it trouble us to have preventing sins, and no longer do we worry: today is long past due, no time left to play catch up, no Hope over and against the cards as dealt, as they have fallen into our hand, as we have so long forgotten the Holy Fasts and still more Holy Reverence.

Because long story short, we were after all the Blessed in the land, the Meek in the land, the Solemnly-Dutiful in the land. Others decide for us: today we go to war, tomorrow we celebrate the victory; or some such gritty speech. It doesn’t trouble us because we are assured that the best in our midst, precisely these are the ones tempted by Satan to despair, tempted by Sin to doubt, tempted by Salacious Thoughts to write oneself off. Is there ever going to be time and circumstance for our train ride to catch up to God’s chosen prophets and their Advanced Stages of life?

God has gifted each according to His design, some as this kind of saint, some as that kind of saint. The plain fact of the matter is, like waking up in a dream to a litany of coursework evaded and postponed, the student panicking in dreamland about not having so very much background Work Done: such are the saints in the land as they contend with the Johnny-come-lately of ambition and refusal to Concede: you had the gospel first! It was entrusted to you to share with us! Or, each of us is bringing very similar fruits—fruits of that coursework and holiness now lived into—of Christian Experience to the table.

To the trenches and to the visionary therein, it is said life flashes before our eyes, the soldier gets his or her entire last will and testament signed and dispatched in a fit of genius the night before; it is said no Einstein or Bohr, no Tesla or Curie, no insert-your-name-here, is any “smarter” than said Visionary in the trenches, that world-changing Vision comes to all: and some of those change-agent dreams—we do battle here—are forgotten upon waking, or are lost in the mad dash, the shout, of war. Visions however come abundantly, and repetitively, and with deep convicting Power, the soldier is Convicted of sin and forgetfulness: these treasures we have in jars of clay, that the surpassing worth may be known to be God’s.