2023-10-04 A Meditation on Precious Moments

“3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” (Ro 12:3–8 ESV)

Those precious moments whereby friends are honored, where the unspoken is brought to bear on the situation, fruit borne, tidy or fitting cleanliness of approach, evil spirits cast out; we warm to the Body, to the fellowship, to the intangible and non-theoretical playing field: yes, theology is good, as is testimony. Yes, patient prayer is a good thing to prescribe. Yes, all our reasoning is cause for boasting, and that not on our own dime but on God the Father’s prerogative.

But the truth is a little more in the gut, in the loins, the relationship hazarded through said exorcism and through said peaceable greeting. Contrasting to all the unspoken brought to bear, the managerial strength, prescriptions of prayer, of bona fide theology: there is a deeper more hard fought front. It is where the spiritual is real. And some Contact hurtles through time and space to us a decade or two later, yet faithful and True.

Therefore we reasonably, as people of good character and mentalism, proffer explanations and preaching, prayers and exhortations. As bondservants we rightly lift up a Cause and a Response to the situation. We see all as laudable reason and sensibility, yet there is that sense in which a Bedrock deals out a powerful blow to ingrained spirit and possession. False possession. Ill spirit. These things prayed over, not in convenient episodes but with urgent, whether professional or amateur, sincerity. Wow, today in light of a near encounter, I feel touch-and-go, in communication with, youthful in thought, to a former incarnation of the Self.

More than that, the soldier is not like Other Folk. They do things one way, we have a higher sense of celebratory togetherness vis-a-vis the Faith. Our Faith informs and directs us to meet in Gospel sensibility rather than spell-binding boast. It allows us to be shy and innocent of certain easily taken-as-par-for-the-course manifestations of whatsoever we are trying to get up to, a friendship, a fellowship, a bond. We were not fools to take the cautious and shy route. We were not in rampant denial to be fools for Christ. We were awkward and gawkers mocked, sycophants chortled, jokesters imagined some sense of “everyone’s doing it; why not you?”. That is, our faith takes us to principled stands even if in the weeping hour that principle is hard to recollect and hold fast to. But hold fast we must.