2024-11-16 A Meditation on Personal Discovery
“24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, 25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Col 1:24-29 ESV)
“Personal discovery” means an adventure game: each soul is dealt patience, a child’s expanse and room to grow, a loving Invite to explore and to resolve. We resolve to follow this wandering Jew… yet also, the faith is a Verdict Strong: God for us; God immutable and immovable; God punctilious and pointed in His Doctrine sublime, divine, guaranteed. That is, the faith is not “weakened” if we have our own Adventure, our Clamoring After, our Discovery, of Time-Tested Truths.
Time-tested, we hold this treasure in jars of clay. It is our sheer delight therein to Discover God for us, God advocating on our behalf, God dealing out license for Joy and promise of Hope. God dares to Forgive, in order that out of the most corrupted and sin-wrecked anatomies, come Saints and Makers of this new world order called Christ.
Somehow, their sin did not hinder the Venture, the Vector of agency and duty and Purpose. We are vectorized as in componentized and asked to Act, to Direct, to be a facet of the bigger picture. And amidst those grueling outward shows of Discipleship, of Militant Discipline, of prep-work and personal pride taken unto that end called fructifying and called Deliberate and called Servant, called Witness, amidst these shows comes a gentler inner compass and inner Conscientiousness: our Faith… designed for us to find as a holy playground, a hayride and bumper-cart wild ride.
Yet Him: not to be underestimated and dealt a sub-par assessment: He is bold to claim our entire beings, being the stronger for each sin confessed; sin is what has made us the decrepit and hunched beings we are, and sin is what endears us to our Savior, who does not sit around waiting for us to invent an Absolving Act, but races to His Cross. There, not resenting His forward act and sole-decider move, we see it being more than His sole-decision but rather a Logic of the Universe, wherein we are cajoled a bit and swaddled up unto the End of Rediscovering a child-like Vision as to just whom we are. Our swaddling clothes, our License to Reveal unto our peers this classified top secret deeper Resolution: this resolution is no longer hidden and made confidential, but is God for us and we… we assuaged, assured of that heavenly pampering turned into heavenly upbuilding and growth unto mature manhood and womanhood.