2023-11-05 A Meditation on Miserly Life
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Pe 1:3–9 ESV)
Life is miserly, they say. To move beyond our illusion of a reasonable perch to view things from, is to complete the fantasy by knowing God is sufficient. God is confident. God is assured. God is our friend, and—we do not balk at the plain speech—our simple possession.
That is, exercised and trained in fully-amped, all-on, potentiality, the down times can come with them some negative self-talk. Some miserly take on life. Some attempt to assess someone else’s plight, to reflect on the pain in body or pain in soul that, although we don’t now have, others do, and one day we might as well.
Yet the Imago Dei is nothing to compromise to others around. We do not flatter ourselves that we can please the atheistic or agnostic by coming down from our worshipful perch. Instead we know God is for us, God is real, God is in lockstep beside us.
The soldier’s cradle, then, is in place so that he or she might the better live post-death. That she or he might the better live on tangibles, fruits called Him, meals called Body and Blood, wounds called reach-out and feel. Somehow our “I hate” becomes “I love”; our “I can’t” becomes “I just wanted to plead; I’m just as happy to say, ‘I can’”. We stop looking for a reasoned and controlling perch to assess all that goes on around us; who knows but that the Christian’s experience, the faith soldier’s experience, is scarcely ever written down. Who knows but that our appetite for public fare rarely affords to such fantasy talk the accolades it deserves.
Life is meager, they say. To move beyond our efforts just to get along, we arrive at an effort to glorify. We arrive at an effort to maraud and to march, just because we can and because it shows willingness, the fruit of prayers. It shows a strong vote for taking sides, for woe to us prior to the advent of a Calling in life. Woe to us who were forbidden for making much of their post-depression life, their post-addiction life, their post-ennui life. We count on some message of Salvation transferred through the space-time gap between two people. They hear and they shuffle off, but the message is taking root. They hear and they demure, but the certain expression makes of us pillars and signposts in the thought-process going forward. They hear and they scoff, but at least they are now looking at the broader picture of a God above. To whom to scoff is akin to loving, to engaging, to beginning a wrestling match such as Jacob underwent that long night (Gen 32).