2025-02-22 A Meditation on Nimble Walk

“8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom 8:1-11 ESV)

Nimble on our feet, the grand scheme is a duality as the Christian balances high spiritual prospects with low observed causes. Life is unadorned. Life is scrambling… the preferred line, “Hey, I’m doing good…” may not even by some measures be true. To arise from the malaise is to understand brand your-name-here, that skills go unappreciated by the world as a whole, and the daring entrepreneurial tactic: this invites blow after blow.

The daring entrepreneurial tactic, this as mentalism plays catch-up with the singular blow: a little normalcy, standard fare of depressive spirit, around here! That is the singular blow. We are after all hearkened and called to Celebrate in entrepreneurial fashion a radical bastion of Faith and all its concomitants. Its concomitant helmsman rank, steering cabin occupancy, eye hath not seen nor ear heard…

Because the excellence of a capitalism is the excellence of unique character traits become Marketable. We each of us, if we ignore the status quo and the malaise, have the power within us to strike a pose. We have the power within us to Inspire the cavalry, the comrades, the cohort. People become new and different, born again people around us, around the Witness in us, around the Prayer Warrior. So the world under-appreciates what any average Joe can do.

More than that, all is good on the works-righteous front. Having talked ourselves up to, coached ourselves up to, a Living Encounter, we are then able to bask in the light of an earned Grace. Earned, because we have dictated it in the terms of Works. Works are currency. Works are ambition. Works are talking points. Works are self-worth. And prior to Doing those works, we unburden them onto Christ. We ask for a breathing space. We rest in His arms. We ask for the Forgiveness Now, not after our first million or two. Forgiveness as in giddy New Leaf turned over. Forgiveness as in Hearing and Answering, He hears, we are answered: God, what of my high plans? Are they all to go kaput? And the present knocking on the door… a parent, a friend, a sibling, a lover… who are we to try and curtail, circumscribe just ourselves, and go it alone? We are of the caliber of person to go the distance and to elevate the entrepreneurial Uniqueness, Exposed perhaps, Vulnerable and Hated, Mocked and dismissed, mindset and prayer life.

So to the muttered plea: know it, O soldier, Man is taught that Christians thrive on Mercy. But that Mercy is itself excelled at when we know what it is to belong: to a cavalry of folks, to a high and secret society, to the kind thoughts of a mentor. We are rather simple, after all. We have our simply Cultural aspects of the Christian faith: the one who grew up in rather Joyous climes, but also in rather stereotypical abstinences; the one who is bright and sunny Today, but nurses a close walk on the wild side; the one who is simply asking to be Understood, by a very different sort of companion. All these have their moment of descent, Christ’s own descent unto Hell; we are mildly Crazy, after all. We are juxtaposing and capitalizing, inspired by our spare change accumulated and turned into Gold. A few life experiences here, a willingness to be low key there; an overall Mindset of Presence and Headship of our organization or our Mentalist’s One-Man Outlay. We outlay, they are blessed. We are not zero-sum: each of us has the ability to be more efficient and more sacramentally-inspired, more effective and simpler in our holdings.