“14 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Rom 14:1-12 ESV)

Getting limber, loosing the joints, shaking it out: some comprehension has arrived of late, comprehension that the world is ruthless and cruel, capricious and debased, illogical and disdainful. Getting limber, some precious inner condition, is our life raft, to the one categorically depressed, it is being used to getting mediocre grades; to the one thinking bad things only happen in theory and to other people, it is acclimating to a world that blights and debases. All these murmurings are closer to us now than when we first believed.

The life coach, it is a task undertaken with these small pockets of peace, weeping, compromised and broken kumbaya togetherness. The perspective attained to, is a perspective built on this collection of life experience, of the depressive spirit or the gleeful spirit, of the gal and of the guy, of the romantic interlude and of the blood brothers bonds. We are a sum of parts greater than any of us. And our existential framework, is again that inner special dynamo, special place, perspective and wisdom wrought in the furnace, that this world will Never Understand.

So we are seen as friendless though surrounded by people. The therapist sees us as needful and lost, though we by contrast feel as though doing the leading. We lead, we are destroyed by the special place arrived at, that mocks our higher reasoning and proves incomplete our better coherent logic. We are destroyed by that alternating dynamic, grateful for so much and alternately feeling as though on a treadmill of unanswerable life questions.

To get limber is to command the hour, to do the leading, notwithstanding a blighting and benighting world all around us. It is to insist on their being a Higher Power, a Reason, who loves us and died for us. It is to accept His prophecies most Pastoral: the faithful in your midst, in your being, shall be harmed and shall be discounted and disdained. You shall be doubted, accused, and relegated to some cubbyhole of existence.

And to top all this off, your own self-doubts shall be paramount. You shall strive to live in the Hour, in the Joy, in the Peace, but find that in this congregation are both friends and enemies. And it breaks your spirit, to encounter enmity. If they hate us, then we hate ourselves because of it. A bit. Now to getting limber and loosing the joints, we stop the ridiculous behavior—so easily arrived at when we succumb—and steer a straight course, even-keeled, of the simpler Giftings and Outpourings of the spirit. It isn’t the world we’re trying to save, just to do our small part. And this Duty spells Relief from so much that looms and that threatens and that mocks us.

Our own words help with this self-ministry. What we say Matters. A testimony in front of a crowd, this sticks with us and builds us up. A failure in front of a crowd only reinforces that God is urgently seeking to sustain us and give us another chance.

The entire world of our experience and encounter, then, has forged in the furnace Personages of a rightly joyous existence. We have so much to be thankful for… yet that truism doesn’t quite save our soul. We are saved precisely because we don’t warm to the occasion for gratitude. Instead we complain. We debate. We coddle ourselves or abuse ourselves. The gratitude comes about in a sincere late hour with that Friend Jesus. We can see around corners! We have gladsome looseness of limb and joint. We accept His prognosis of a world bent in on itself and bent on destroying His saints. And this is no self-congratulatory exhortation, it is an occasion to be Strong in Him that we might be strong in assessing our own failures. It is all fun, at this latter stage, the Occasion to be agent, personage, and exemplar of a Religion with wings.