2023-09-24 A Meditation on Personalized Truth

“12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. 13 You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, 14 and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. 15 What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. 16 Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? 17 They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18 It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” (Ga 4:12–20 ESV)

Approaching Truth, there is a tell-tale presence that lingers; wry disposition, gladsome outlook: we bring something accumulated to the table. We are a product of our long experiences, blessed estate being no add-on but rather a history of times bypassed, of lived fortuity, of a spirit of passing over all the many ways we are exercised and run the range of good and bad outlays. Our basic training, faith-filled and seeking, finds a spark internal and externalized. Our thoughts disciplined in a punish-and-reward setup, we fear not to unmask the Truth as accumulated Experience dictates it. We fear not to be Gospel children of the Most High. We lose nothing to the tendency to want to plan and to be aloof, not embedded, not incorporated, not vulnerable.

No, we are vulnerable to the extreme. We are “all-in” to the max. We approach our Truth as a citizen fully cognisant of perspective, of moral relativity and ambiguity, of tainting our own Story with our personal quirks and bodily estate. We are mind-body. We are True witnesses because we fear not to meld, to speak as though from our own fault lines and experience. No concession to the spirit who accuses, we instead, gladsome tidings par, dig deep and emote, evoke, emit a clarion Call wide and far in its reach. We are the flesh-and-blood sweat and Purpose of souls determined to thrive, and to capitalize on said thriving via investments cashed in, relativity procuring Testimony, tired haggard times with little time for prayer: these are cashed out for what the Good Spirit gives in that hour.

So to the stations and to the battle lines. We are no purists of elite discourse, but bring a wry cynicism or a gladsome positivity to what-all we say and speak with gestures. We pity others, forgiving their innocence and absence of giftings we have been blessed with, but only to a fault: we do not patronize others, but know that each of us lives and dies on our own ticket. We each have the capacity with glad hearts to seek Salvation, and we each have the obstinance to seek something else. That something else is somewhere called Damnation, but who are we to so limit the Spirit of Christ? So each of us wraps up and verbalizes up the Scenario, in vivid awareness we are sinners and plagued with a bodily ailment, our Gospel personalized with vivid revelations of fits and starts, of modes called Experienced and Confessed. We are confessed and penitent precisely because of the fault lines and the beauteous musicality of chatter, airwaves hot and vivid with cross-talk from redeemed souls.