“2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. 9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. Paul’s Ministry to the Thessalonians 2 For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11 For you know how, like a father with his children, 12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. 13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. 14 For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thess 1:2-2:16 ESV)

Repping the soldier, weird ways people simultaneously Like on each other but deny these their own friends, would-be acquaintances, conversation partners, the Duty and Bustling Livelihood of a shared community; these grow us up into those Personages who can do honor to a Friend, who can repay loyalties, who see the Company Mind and praise, laud and upbuild these the right-rooted Colleagues.

Because Christ took even His most loyal to the Cross as observers, as witnesses to the Fact: God’s patience, His loyalties (yes! Loyalties to created, chosen, twelve times Man), did not end in a appeasing grin or denial of a few core tenets around here: His tenet simply was that this is all Very Real, and see, how we have our Jonathans (“Yes, David!”) and our Mary the Mother of Jesus’s, even. Our own mothers and fathers. Our brothers, sisters, and neighbors. Christ showed us a mad Facet of mankind, of piled high bodies of wrestling, wrassling, striving, climbing, pushing-others-down, race to the uncertain top. The top that offers nothing but a photographed View that already we had in some small fashion down below. And imagine: to be at the summit, and realize of a sudden: we can’t simply mosey right back into mom’s and dad’s loving arms; breakage has occurred somewhere along the Climb. Our self-agency, our adulthood, we are starting to make Genuine Decisions and, the only fear greater than that we haven’t reached the summit, is that we have. And it is a lonesome fait accompli.

Company Mind means to hear from said mother, father, again and again, the loving—rooted in, yet oblivious to, the sins of the priest—correction and forgiveness. Our mission central, our cause, our Reason for all the craft and agency, the agents’ Purpose and Mission as decreed, as assigned, as divvied up and bandied about, dealt out, is simply God’s upward call in Christ Jesus. We envision a Reformation, not just of morals (the “Law” will always cohabitate and set up camp near to Grace; a grace-filled person immediately and gladly welcomes a few pointers around here, a little Law, some fresh-soul’s willingness once again to try at those games which left us Ruined, those games called Holiness), but a reformation of theology. The tangible Fact O soldier you are a bit more precocious, in a good way, than the average passing-the-time pewsitter. Each of us is in an existential Reactionary and Agent-Like frame of mind. All mindsets are pinned to subconscious and conscious loyalties, desires, tamed desires, holy desires, to a weird way we cannot simply “vote with the intelligentsia…”: society is weirdly effective, and said Professors and Pundits are just as much ones for social groupthink and societal ebb and flow, as any ramshackle man or woman about town. And all this taken in a healthsome sense: the near neighbors not presuming to be Godlike, not presuming to be Perfect, but weirdly Calm and subliminal in the underwater deep dives of life in community. Breathing, because breath is Assured so long as we don’t panic and lose our breathing apparatus. Swimming, because progress is unto God’s Ends, provided we don’t get all turned about and turned in on ourselves. Bearing one another’s burdens, provided we don’t go obsequious or forget to tend to our own simpler needs.

Therefore to the ramparts, and to the mission! There, we seen Friend and Colleague of a sudden taking stock and reflecting in that weird Escape from the miasma and social Glue that does humanize and humble our endeavors: sometimes we are on an exalted Plane, a higher playing field, a thought-sphere suddenly Aware and tending to a few things around here, a few duties to each other, some love for the simple request made by a friend and forgotten some months and years. Providing for the brotherhood, for the sisterhood. And if our own solo crossing is encouraging to others, see to it that already we have nipped in the bud any and all sibling rivalries, as flipside to some weird Friendship maintained. Honored, honoring the brotherhood, the sisterhood. Because we are Right Centered upon Christ’s Projects in the world, who coaches us into a peace or getting-by that Coexists and does so with alacrity and Mission. The missional over-the-top request for Forgiveness. The forgiving of the suicidal Attacks and frustrated Peculiarities and Complaints. The soldier again, more Alert by design and coaching, by the radio and news site they tune to, to a Higher Calling and this being one so helter-skelter, fly-by-night at times, as to evade Verbal Description. What is our mission, O officer of the cloth, of the flag? It all dissipates to nothing, until we Recall that Christ’s Cruciform Mission insisted and determined itself to Point to man’s utter need and self-ruin, to Man’s self-sabotage and unfriendly self-centeredness. So we are agents of this Gospel, and really, it being by now second nature to evade and protect Secret Knowledge, we too cannot ourselves break the ice quite in unpresumptuous fashion, but our interlocutor can… tell me more about this Baptism, about this Christ, about this Cause and Mission. And here we go aloft like on eagles’ wings. Because the Vision is for tomorrow, and the anxieties and pains… they dissipate in the Now.