2025-03-08 A Meditation on One True Sign

“16 And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. 4 An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed.” (Matt 16:1-4 ESV)

Watching the times, there’s such a thing as going flat. We watch, and the devil refuses to light up. The devil refuses to make it all follow some course, some prerogative, some sign of the times. All our better notions, these fail to give us access to that golden key, the special room, the means and techniques for Defining War, Defining Consequents, as in, event B follows from event A: I saw the people awash in sin, and anticipated a rapture. I anticipated, when I saw the markets rocking, that judgment was nigh.

To go flat, is to be to all but a few elect, a blip. A mark on the radar with a set of things that preceded it, and no sweat a set of things that followed it. It is only the radical Christian, the persistent Soldier, who finds ownership and Meaning in that moment in time. A time concrete, though fleeting. A time persistent, though evaporating. A time telling, though come-what-may.

It was a stark Time when our Savior died. It meant the world, especially in hindsight, to a precious few. It came to mean something to each of us, through the End to all search parties longing after a few more Signs and Wonders. Our sign, our wonder, is to get to the business of caring for folks. It is to get to the business of saying Already and Not Yet: the war will not be televised, at least, that War we are inducted into. It is our prerogative to study that strange Sign called Cruciform Thought, to lend Meaning to the radar “noise”.

The alien lifeform. The God-with-us mentalism. Be defeated, O Man! But in being defeated, be aligned with a waking thought of tomorrow, that eyes will open upon something once Puzzling now Razor Sharp and Clear. That Already the elect are being put to labor, sent into the fields, ratcheting up Souls Saved. Who were we, after all, so presumptuously to ask after yet more signs, more formulae, more heady thinking, when God with us, Emmanuel, Dying on a Cross, spelt the end times for our pedantic thinking. The end times to our futile Striving and so-called inner-circle seeking. We thought we were inner circle, is that it? And as we gave up on that conceit, suddenly we were front and center, inner harbor, inner circle, inner world as Delineated, as Explicated, as Shown Forth by our God and Father.

Wow, says the fresh-faced recruit, since when were lofty things my personal workspace, playspace, kindergarten and hood and gown ceremony all combined in one? It was, after all, a nicer set of thoughts, a kinder introduction, a winsome encounter, that Invented—nay, Revealed—Christ For Us: the Lion lying down with the lamb, the Eternity Because. Because we dared to Accept a stranger brand of sign and wonder: His Cross. His fructifying reminder: I was solo and lonesome in my Mission; I was an end to so many proud boasts, a quieter and “hey, that hurt!” even at times, reality, yet one you can and shall fall in love with. We fall in love and are not boastful but comfy, in these motherly digs, these fatherly environs. We learn to be Saintly in plain love for the trials, love for the meeker sort of walk, an overwhelming notion of Life Eternal shared amongst the brethren, the sistren. Because, though ending our pride, it inaugurated our monastic Discipline, in which Discipline was Celebration and Righteous quieter sorts of talk.

Less boastful, but loud with the sword and the spear, loud with the shield and the helmet, loud only in accidental consequence of our Conviction: to this I was Called. The Faith that melts hearts, moves mountains, encircles lossy escapism or ennui with its strong Edge. The Edge that makes Followers, whatever name they go by, who have Discovered a peace on Earth, have Discovered a Tribe in which to belong, have accidentally alighted upon strange and mystical ways Christ’s Cross does random acts of kindness and strange modalities of Peace. In discovering this we may just discover the Christ in our heart. In feeling forgiven. In feeling Knowledgeable and Ready, because the End Times… if End Times are Now, then we enter upon them continuing in Prayer for the unconverted. Continuing in Prayer for the awful antagonisms. Continuing in Certainty that we Belong, we are Owned, we take Stock, in the prayers of the Saints, who are Today presented to the world at large as their tickets to ride. Just as Christ was for us all, and continues to be.