2023-02-14 A Meditation on Saying Yes

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Re 3:20 ESV)

If once embraced, it is a gesture we now know goes both ways. Jesus kneels before us as a supplicant: “Will you open the door to your heart?”. Jesus takes us, wherever we are, and talks words that make purchase in the heart, talks words that feed, that point out things we willingly accept as the nature of our heart, nature of Man, nature of Being. That is, empty veneer becomes substantial in the kind of preaching that takes us through the valley of doubt and sin.

Regardless of what escape velocity our faith is running on, there is time for a feeling faith and a nurturing faith. We become what we believe, and only do believe without hypocrisy towards who we once were. We are feeling and nurturing because we sincerely have something we wanted to share. Without hypocrisy, we find our little island amidst vast shoals and corporate creations and personal accomplishment in the faith midst. In the midst, our sincerity wields and hones a servant mentality, the desire simply to be that thing for one another, to be that person rather than any creed or rote list of faith statements.

We serve a person not a doctrine. Persons do and act, doctrines elevate instead man’s mind. Man’s mind is flailing this way and that, acting out of a sense of responsibility, circumspect and self-contained. Personhood speaks and it is done. Personhood entices with acts of love gestured towards us and surprisingly giving. We have love given to us, and do not shake it off. We do not shake off what astonishing willingness we discover in realms of the heart we never knew existed. For, there is all the difference in the world between the willing tasks done together, and the reluctance or unwilling. We are willing because Jesus is just right for us, has passed the test, has earned our willing Yes.

So the escape velocity, the wings that soar, and in that midst return to bedrock check-up: what is the costly purchase today I can make in this good Name? What purchase in my heart of hearts can I donate over unto God? What is my need today to be sane and sober for a future time of judgment?

The Christian knows a giddy Encounter is more than veneer, and climbs that sheer face with gratitude for the good spirits today. With good cheer and healthsome spirit the Christian soldier ratchets up healthsome discoveries of ways signed over unto their peers, to be cheerful together, to bask with some music playing, simply to excite and dwell in the day’s outlay. The Christian has bravely faced down bargains and contracts with life and with death, too unbelievable for the many to whom they are sent.

We are sent just to a few, at times, and at times seemingly to no one. But the key is our practical, influencing, bargain and contract with the servant life, with serving life on the line, with heroic self-discoveries and genius in a trench, found “in the wild”, amongst the many, hidden in the crowd. The fruit and seed that will propagate forward, is hidden in peers we see in the neighborhood and know as no more of a thing than bundles of flesh and blood, tears and joy, neighborliness and interdependence.

Somehow, all notions of a mechanized future, equipment and bluster, gives way to Man in his estate, his or her trusting statements to fellow Man, the anointing and servanthood bequeathed unto this one, who is man or woman of the people. So was Jesus, not removed as in a Wizard of Oz contraption designed to illicit respect and fear, but hoping against hope that those ones to whom He was sent, would by life itself already be possessed of a willing heart, not looking for advantages in the friendship, but appropriate and sharing and giving, and all those things we discover in our friends, in the neighborhood, in chance encounters. For we say Yes.