2024-02-01 A Meditation on Promises and Efforts
“2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:1-11 ESV)
In the promises of time, mental shifts and locale shifts take place, the coming of a Son of Man is promised, and we, we are found dutiful and situational Aware. We are found rather strong for the journey, but also meek as to what focus and Reality does bode our way or alight upon us, gently showing concentration formerly so rare or something that speaks and invents, that calls us rightly to know our religion forward and backwards and then simply to handle it, to get along with it, to see ample room for contemporary Relevance. Because we were after all lambs in the fold, children sensitive yet full of bravado, wondering and in awe at the strange days that fall upon us.
A coming of a Son of Man is promised. Do we need invent our religion or do we rather learn from the duty-bound predecessors, our guideposts coherent even amidst the inability rightly to order our ways. Ordering our ways is never our own prerogative any longer, but we alight upon focused jaunts or meaningful wanderings and wonder why so much bolder as we are, we are nonetheless sensitive and childlike, unable rightly to order our ways, frustrated at times or cursing under our breath, yet too determinedly Peace and Prosperity, distractions from that “devil’s workshop” of unemployment and lazier hours; a devil, we rightly understand and generously know the ways of.
We can after all find belonging and simply that half-crazed Energy or Enthusiasm, to alight upon a cart and to hitch ourselves to it, to allow if we’re honest about our hindrances, then all the more are we amenable to that Energy that carries us beyond anything we’d in natural state be able to muster. The cocoon no longer that, but a world to discover and a religion to hedge up in contemporary needs met, whatever we unapologetically invent and lance forth, because we are assured of this, that as lambs in the fold a gentler shepherd watches over us. A more benevolent Calm heals us and encourages us. We are after all professionals at what Belonging and Fellowship joins ranks with us, arms linked, and we, by custom and life experience, begin to get the right and duty to take our work seriously, to take our creed to heart, to take our dogma to focused energies. We unapologetic have room in which to grow. We have time and gratitude just—no dismissive gestures—happiness for that hour of time for prayer or the end of such rubrics, the beginning of Salvation Owned, Predestination, nothing we can say or do that will take us from the love of the Father.
It is a more sensitive aspect of our bold confrontation with life. Our buoyed childhood reinvented and restored, as we measure the worth of ideas of all varieties, as convicting and healing of our time, worth our thought, meaningful in our storyline. Life’s story never quite gets at the sense of untold reception, gifts, simple peace and assurance, untold Belonging, Duty, Purpose, and all this as we wonder at how much a toolkit faith tosses our way, no reinvention or revisionism but Choice and Selectivity as to a conviction that the Good Book and the Spirit who interprets, has all things needful unto salvation. That the saints were opposed as much as any of us, attacked and having crazed things put into their mouths, but too a gospel if only we were bold enough to claim as our rightful estate. Those who so claim may be first off the cruise liner called Life, they may be jailed or silenced, afflicted or accused. And such is the first confidence, that there is ample room in each of our lives to draw closer and to be immediately outfitted unto a bold expedition. Those who can fight, shall fight. Those who pray, shall pray. Those who only this hour have a benevolent thought or inclination, shall be heard and shall have made a difference. Such is our secret confidence, that each prayer lifted or thought spoken will come about in some parallel universe intending to join our literal universe. We are forgiven for not working on God’s timetable, and hopeful to let Him bring peace and solution in ways laughably joyous and wondrously better than we even could ask or imagine.
In this is forgiveness. In this is really facing the fact, no priestly word or official decree quite has the staying power of Occupation and Busy-ness to mete out a forgiving spirit. We invent depressions and anxieties if left to our own devices. And it is God’s gift to invest in the prophetic spirit of each age, hoping some will never forget, and at the same time, will be bold to hear anew, what patent peace and duty is afforded each hearer.