2023-08-30 A Meditation on Love and Strife

“11 “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, 12 lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.” (Deut 8:11-16 ESV)

Love that has reached the end of its tether. A glance, a brush against each other in the street. Immediate caution and despair: prayer for each other, and that epic question, why do we have peace? Why the love for each other, for the brethren, for the sistren; is all careening towards that kind of slight that has no rhyme nor reason other than that someone felt a little gumption climbing into the driver’s seat? Rather, let us rewind and recall the vast plains of sensitivity, of mutual love felt even as one was nervous about falling in love. Even as one was nervous about putting down the facade and welling up with genuine humanity, compassion, some non-negotiables: we refuse to negotiate the good labors we perform, knowing that regardless of the social gamble or the give-and-take, that we are relied upon and endear to each other ourselves via reliability and good things done. In this sense we love the good works of the saints.

More, the right people to be dialoguing with each other are wounded and sheltered in caves and retreats, whilst the false bravado and the person we struggle really to care about enough, in prayer for the enemy, in love for the punchy, in peace with the youthful proud, that person reminds us how wars are begun and remind of the perennial question, “Could anything have been done about it?”

For it was out of a mesmerizing and vast peace that we chose and picked up our certain chip on the shoulder, for a cause, for a dynamic, for a treaty, for a fellowship, for a doctrine. Others, whom we love with endless love, differ in these matters. And we at times even wonder if our stance is anything more than coincidence, happenstance, the roll of the dice. Is it truly “ours”? To live and die for? To be gifted self-presentation and guise suitable because of our creed?

We are bold and proud to fight under a doctrine that eliminates the caution, at least vis-a-vis social engagement. We engage, and build, no longer afraid and now capitalizing on a miraculous “space”, a give-and-take, a reality of safe homesteads and plains, fields white for the harvest, and places nonetheless to bind and knit out of wondrous personal giftings and aspects. The aspect, the person blossoming or flourishing is a sight begun so often with a strange outlay, a Christian good deed done in passing, habitually, the left hand not knowing what the right is up to. Such is our confidence in each other, that we are allied, aligned, equal in those strange discomfitures that heal and invite and end the selfish labors.

So to the cause, and to the flag, a flag borne in Love yet carried by a subtle department, branch, aspect of Love: to discern Grace, as a remarkable characteristic of a woman’s or a man’s dialoguing and repartee. That they hold the highest regard for this little glimpse, and turn to a platform in love even if not in the flesh, even if simply theoretical and mental. It is more than mental, it is heart-worn, and willing and able to go the dastardly routes to find one another in that valley of shadow and death. There, we are excited by a firm defensive position, yet one thereby owning Love, Love as discovered in the theological wealth called Grace. Grace, as a term and a theoretical notion, yet found in the uneducated believer and bookworm alike, to be choosy and picky as to how and with whom we bare our gentler souls, whilst being confident that our choosiness is to reject Law and dwell in the light afforded by acknowledging the plight of Law, the impossible demands, the accusations, the guilt-trip, the need to tell people off, as though our own problems were their fault.

Grace speaks to each person as an experience that now is remembered and wistfully sought. It speaks as a no-time-to-delay honesty with the self, that the souls belong to the same cloth and banner, His banner over us being Love. The souls have once glimpsed Another, in each other seen A Person Different, Divergent from ourselves, and await a future consummation of that Love neatly felt out and lived into, patiently listening.

The fighter on the street, the immature jest or jibe, the punchiness and such, is first of all cause to have well up in us real maturity, that we concede in symbol, only because such turf warfare is way beneath our later gift of higher thoughts; but the thoughts, to them we have a duty, to reflect, as to what basis there is for there to be care and love, mutuality. So we welcome additional, not less, brushing up against each other, to see a wide and broad rainbow emerge called Peace, called flourishing, called blossoming. We wrongly feel as though the enemy has something right: perhaps we don’t like ourselves quite enough, either. Perhaps we criticize our own addictive or immature or lazy soul firstmost, conceding that much even when we shouldn’t. We should reflect upon that loveless world just as much as upon that patience for the right opening with those arenas where there is clearly Love and fellowship. Let us grow. Let us band together. Let us bend over backwards to entertain and build up the youthful immature. Let us give second chances. Let us set free. Let us pause to witness only a devil at work trying to topple the patiently-built ark and tower and street corner of Peace.

We never have enough backing to make that chess move called belligerence; we are not “collecting” until a coalition of the willing becomes majority, or gives us reason to shut the door and declare war. No, we discipline ourselves to stay near to the confessional, so that we always remember that Door called Jesus. It is always open. We thank a Good Father and Mother, a Good Holy Spirit, who intrinsically challenges us to greater love and to accepting our burdens in life.