2024-08-25 A Meditation on Meeting Us Where We Are

“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)

Gauged to our circumstances, to our level of engagement and of future possibility: the Faith is a runestone bringing all things to all comers: none shall be turned away. Both healing to the ones hopelessly compromised, dream-filled to the ones in futility, cheerful to the ones endlessly employed, it pulls no punches: this and more shall God One Day do for you. This and more shall your welcome committee in the Heavens one day be. This and more shall you be not only accompanied but celebrated in broad fellowship on a day when all hidden things come to light, a day when our strange and intellectual compromises, hideouts, charades, end and a new day dawns.

A day of working at exactly what is on our official resume; a day of spiritual things not just being elided, hinted at, verbalized around but actually being our bread and butter. Our Hope and Composure being pain-free, illness-absent, nervous disposition minus, anxiety over. Our same experience, however, is that in strange metaphysically miraculous ways when once we’ve Accepted this denouement of only what is spiritual, of a distant Heaven, then indeed Actual Facts assemble and enter upon our life stories, make Tangible, Incarnate, Transubstantiated a whole new Realm of life in this world, in this community, in newfound employment, in the flipside to the night of mourning what is—let’s face it—hopelessly lost.

Hopeless no longer, we Engage and we Arise to literal Actualities, to coherent Potentialities, to the submissive’s Experience of assurance and phraseology Divine. Words that breathe into, give life to, speak into existence. Words that promise and put the telling glint in the Saint’s eye, that all this and more, gifted as we are with sober life in perched and embedded Circle of acquaintance, family, and friend, that all our gratefulness be in turn spent upon a Tomorrow Hope.

Tomorrow tonight’s dying last Vision. Tomorrow this afternoon’s clock-out hour’s weary last Hope. Tomorrow this morning’s beleaguered readiness for yet hour upon busier hour more, visionary and gesturing, speaking into, hearing into, envisioning into, a Better Hope. All this because the Saint Himself (Herself, to those keeping accounts) spent His or Her best hours going to the Cross. Spent His best segments going to the Service of feeding and healing. Spent His best hobbyist opportunities denying Himself—dare we say, or ask for any more?—in the name of availability to the masses. And this a thing we would love to insert ourselves right into, to dive into, to embed into, only see when once such a simple purpose is elided, that all manner of trials, temptations, confusions, reactions demonstrate themselves. Yet, too, the peace-filled time when we are not in the crosshairs of a brooding or devilish hateful enemy.

Is it true that to do good will always ultimately be rewarded, and that when persecuted it is only because we are less than perfect in our endeavor? Hardly! To do good is to invite so much mock-horrified stare-downs. It is to invite so much dying for the sake of what is absent, the simple pick-me-up, the simple composed bodyguard of the spirit, the spiritual guard who actually—no matter our boasts that we “got this”—testifies to a better understanding of what fatherly and parental, motherly patience is. The nearness, the alter-vision, the altar itself a vision in that it took from us such a Coach and Mediator. Who drew near because He had simple intents, that were destined to die a lonesome death on a Cross.

But to the Intention: His wish to live out a life of Service and of Commiseration Divine, to pray for others, to a simpler monastic sense of peacetime and rest, met with busy labors in the vineyard. He had in wilderness retreats by the daybreak after long into the night, Divine reassurance needing no apologies nor compromising for a weaker sense of certainty. He was our Mainstay, to what any rational person would call half-crazed, the wildfire Word of one individual, that spoke a word Speaking into Being reality and creation and social networks and the joyous day when—seeing finally something reassuring—we took His side against the former comforts of life. False comforts them all, empty legalism or vendetta or faux-message-of-peace. The faux peace when at the center is all manner of Law and Hatred, all manner of faux-fright and creaturely repose. We once rested in things today that shame us, we once rested and Forgot, those things that by repenting of we could see through the eyes of a more longstanding observer, just who and what was our Demonologist’s diagnosis. We had proximity to Demons, to the false, to the harried Wide World of unbelief. We had things to repent of, and all this with yet the request we do it prior to the new hundredfold set of friends, prior to the new peaceful inner dialog, prior to the new sense of being “Good people”: we had to take a leap of faith and a trust fall.

We had to, because the languages don’t vibe. The spiritual person receives things in spirit, while the material person has routines that they fright at the thought of fasting out of: anything not in theory able to be given up, is a crutch and a cause of anxiety and depression, of futility and of emptiness. So to the strange fascination each Christian should have, for the distant wide-eyed, pained Vision of certain new or old believers, who see as though through a fire. Who love as though no tomorrow. Who draw lines in the sand, only regarding acknowledgements of their own plain weaknesses. Who in all this are not Afraid to go down that route with us by their side. Who in all this are matter-of-fact truthful: I am tempted; I am harried; I am anxious, and in all this I am cultivating a better sense of Christian composure, of the fighting spirit, of the meek ministry and outlook. In all this, I am more than conqueror through Him who loves me.