“3 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. 18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Co 3:1–23 ESV)

“43 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. 4  Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. 5  Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. 6  I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, 7  everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”” (Is 43:1–7 ESV)

Tendrils of construction live and take form; always our gambit is Front and Center large, always we become accustomed to a certain level of risk, always try and be methodical and careful, but today isn’t the day. Because the presenting concern always and everywhere is of Ruin, of a careless sidle or jaunt and those tendrils, so eagerly melded, formed, coming together, do Break. Do Breakage. Do Destruction. Do End… end of our labors under the sun.

And the flipside is that we Aspire, Reaching for the stars we carefully balance yet a new Offering, emblem, token, onto the spire. Our steeple, the steeple of our wildly helter-skelter Construction… it pays solemn reverence to Something Up There. Our door to the construction: it lays Open and Inviting. We are never too incautious as to Worry up a storm too great for our Weathering. We weather the storm. Mistakes, they come and go, but the Fear of One Day and One Day only, being “off the mark”: this will not ruin everything. Or will it? Because we vouchsafed to Adhere to a Duty, to a Calling, to a strange Belief system that amidst the holy Silence, it is the brand of silence found only in Real Deal scenarios. Yes, the people we care for, they Retreat to give us space. The people we Think on, Pray for, Curiously ask the Spirit to explain to us: these people are also building upon building, tendril upon tendril, and their Silent Reverential Posture… we learn that ours is a rather bigger league, big like we would dream of as children; big like Ruin will always and everywhere—if it arises—be met with a Judicious Prince at the helm, who will Stay the enemy and the Avenger. Will be met by the Spirit with the Sword of the Spirit: touch not my anointed ones.

The Construction teeters and wobbles no more, but our Gambit remains risk-seeking; we were never persuaded to take on undue risk, however it behooves us our Position in society, to know Every Day is gameday, Every Hour is immutable, we Cannot Err (by some measures), because we are In the Spirit. And that same Spirit who utilized Christ His progeny and His Child by Faith not by flesh (though Mary and Joseph were likewise utilized and Called), who Utilized Him in a way that even He briefly questioned… to go dying forward, upon a Cross; this thing is Beautiful and a Mystery. That our risk-taking is leading us to a coached and urgent, patently Mission Critical and Lives-on-the-Line Crucible of Affliction, to a Service that will try our entire sense of self-preservation and risk-aversion.

We are good folk; we have this Reassurance by the Spirit, yet what a dastardly Person that is! Why trust or hear “Good job, my good and faithful servant” from a Spirit who mocks the wealthy in their self-sufficiency, who kills the prophets, to prove some out-there Point? To prove God is no respecter of persons. To prove there is more to life than living and dying. To prove… that our tendrils of Structure and ebb-and-flow dynamic buildings are Here and Now called to Venture forth, adventuring forth into yet a Brighter Potentiality. Because of the risk involved. Because we were after all Pinnacle for an hour: a crucial hour, a changing of the guard hour, a Call to do a Deed of Service that none will receive Accolades or recognition for. We have the administration of caring for the old saints, do we not? Except all of the best amongst those saints are self-caring, are aware of being Used then discarded as it might seem. The refusal to have a corrupt society that honors beyond their due the children of service-minded men and women: we do not believe in hereditary Rights of Passage, only this, no nepotism involved when you can say, “I at least know where this one comes from, so there’s that, a trust that cannot be bought”. All of us ought have a once-over, and boy will we botch it up most likely, but God looks on the heart of the man or woman. God sees the Adventurousness and Honors things we scarcely are aware of.