2023-03-10 A Meditation on New Awareness

“For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.” (Phm 7 ESV)

Artificial intelligence research begins, perhaps, with a staple from math and computer science: the search tree. To find intelligent checkers or chess moves, the computer imagines each branching point as a move, splitting into branches according to how many possibilities there are to consider, and then tries and see how many branches “deep” it can go. Evidently, only a few, because to branch is to multiply wildly!

Our own existential plight is like this, insofar as being able to say “Yes” to something, or otherwise being able to have a question answered, does take us a step deeper. We go on a date and suddenly make a confession, either to ourselves or to our interlocutor; strange sides of our person show themselves; having done and done the answer to one question, we glide forth assured and revealing, seeing our better halves somewhere “down the line”.

This is astonishingly a power we covet in ourselves, as well. And what is it, but a heart grace and patient, a prophetic knack just for getting at what sin is haunting our friend and peer, their own sin, the sin of a sick society. And though we know “discovery” and try to use a fast to “get there”, using the fast in hopes of beginning tangibly to see ghost and shadow of illness more concretely, though we know this, we truthfully “come out of the closet” in messy fellowship and unhindered conversation. Our conversation is bold and brave, fit for the glad heart and invite of a peer, it is forming bonds and creating a world where, like with Jesus, we venture forth excited on our own initiative, not just because He is there with us, but in full knowledge He needs no assurance from us regarding Himself: we can see Him go joyously to His Cross vis-a-vis making sign and sacrifice on our behalf, but in fullness of joy that He will survive and live on post-Resurrection.

So the new world order in our own fickle hearts, is that muscle flexed and that personal approbation, where the answer to the question, “Who is my friend?”; “What is the mother’s role in my life, or the father’s, where my own parents have fallen short?”; “Will I be lonesome in the future?”; “Is it sin to talk to another person romantically?”; all these find pat solution in that family hearth and sibling estate that spells modest peace, kosher acceptance, fledgling appetite satisfied, the words we speak consummating in all senses those deeper needs and desires of the frail human heart. And we can be this for each other, with no grand doctorate or expertise in prophecy.