2023-12-09 A Meditation on Persistence

“1 Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. 2 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” (Ps 127:1–2 ESV)

“58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Co 15:58 ESV)

Persistence pays off. If we seek a certain maturity or responsibility, it is towards that strange life lesson of measured response and shyness being what measures the charges, humility, diminution of the assertive complaint, whatever that complaint may be. So the soldier as peacekeeper. So the soldier as courageous not just on the battle front, but in that confidence on the home front, around the neighborhood, and in the workplace or civic functionality: confidence that if Christ was singled out and obsessed over unto death, so too in some measure shall we be. We must cease to complain about fairness or duty, and start to take up that duty of dying for the mistakes of others, for the weird obsessions of others or the greedy sought-out flattery of others. And maybe, just maybe, therein is a newfound chance for ourselves to repent. Recalling dastardly relationship games past. Leaving someone in the cold (was it, after all, self-righteous us, with sadness in our broken heart, and progress eventually unto repentance in our broken spirit?). Or celebrating a warmth prior to any religious observance or confession or contrite heart.

For we need a contrite heart to join in the celebration. Only the shy attendee of the party shall receive the bounty being celebrated. Like a momentary blip invisible to the self-righteous and those fat off the land, but all the world unto the inductee. Who has made herself, himself, ready, Fine threads and all the trimmings. A gift in hand, something small by way of acknowledging a gratitude freely given.

One fault-finder can obsess, feeling slighted or patronized. They can promise all the world that it is their duty to convict such-and-such person of sin. And a stitch in time saves nine: let us meditate together on big sins versus small sins. Let us meditate together, for what one sees in the darkened rooms as fantasy, the other sees as inviting prophetic sight into our lives. The spirit of prophets being subject to prophets (1 Co 14:32). If that is us, we who prophesy in the Lord’s name.

The intervention, then, is mightily aware of its own stifling red zone, error zone, need for a full tuning according to love not frustrated hate. Yet this is what singles out our soldiering anointing, selves, uniqueness, duty. That we can be leaned upon without any exasperation on our part, but a quieted and patient desire to be that Christ for one another. Expecting hardship. Used to being wrongly judged. Awaiting exclusion. Predicting an end to the entire sage operation.

Yet our Operation never ends. It has inspired us and anointed us and given us cause to fight on. For the beleaguered many Jesuses in our midst. For those whom time and circumstance has passed over: too bland, too pedantic, too innocent, too experienced. We hear in darkened chamber of thought and prayer that voice so cynical driving back at the root of all our present-day difficulty: “Put nothing in writing”, “Drag it out”. So we of all people are most to be pitied, because it is a mercy that our Spirit within is not a Spirit unsatisfied, hungering for fresh kill, driving us mad with the fruits of our own sins. It is a mercy that the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable. So we suit up and get down to the day’s mighty task, a task of strength and arms, yet of full-bodied knowledge unafraid.

Persistence is the soldier’s pressure applied to the situation, to the Call. The ongoing emphasis or accent unto Love, towards that heavenly love letter written to us, in hope it shall inspire in us to do the same. To pen a friendly rejoinder. To know it is secret who our inspiration is, but widely known that God is not mocked, God not remaining in His humiliation. God not hung out to dry, except until He is hung out to dry and we, we avert our attention and our love quest, averting our eyes until—behold!—He is with us. For we longed to labor together, but had worldly concerns intervene: who loves who? Who bears the bouquet of roses and who a “bouquet of roses” of some spiritual guise? We longed to work the vineyard in unison, songs lifted high around what meeting of equals under God’s Sight, we each of us enter into. Equals, not enemy combatants, the peace in our home barracks more precious than gold that perishes. Possessed of some genuine theology of what Relationship means, God-wise. Not to obsess nor to placate, but for the deep rumblings of the Spirit to be unafraid of holding to the line. Not kneading ad infinitum but declaring the dough is prepared, the time is nigh, the hope is reaching far ahead into our future life in a widespread and varied sense of One Community. At peace within. At war outside with the impenitent or the scoffing belligerent. Patient with the unbeliever, but war and pluck with the spirit of unbelief. Until His return in glory.

Then the accusing man or woman skims all we put out there for any personal fetish or piqued interest selfish. We are worked over as those who “need to repent”, and it astonishes our listeners: “You mean, that all this time, you thought that you weren’t in sin?” It horrifies them, who believe in a “way of doing things ‘round here”, that we the late novitiate are not more beggarly or what is truth, more flattering of their personal pride. Yet we take a man’s or a woman’s word seriously, not patronizing them.