2023-08-13 A Meditation on Signs of the Times

“3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Mt 16:3 ESV)

The signs are on all sides of us. Urgency is in the air, change is occurring on all sides, inchoate forms are met with duty and purpose. For in the loud clamor of change, of war, spiritual and otherwise, there comes the time when no longer do we sit pretty on a perch of sage observation and knowing decision-making. We sit instead as those grappling and wrestling, accepting this idea as instructional rather than as time and occasion to fuss or judge. We hasten to accept what gifts of personality have been created in our upbringing or creation: to do well by the younger generation, who do so reward with the calling out of our name and with the invite to play. Yet in all this, we see on all sides signs and rather than confusion, purpose and calling.

The soldier, therefore, by nature and by the no-nonsense community standards, is called to work and to labor, no pretty perch of thought but rather all is changing all around us. As we convert, things become circumstance and occasion for better judgment, better wisdom, better adoption, of good principals, and yes: we reach a stage oblivious and frustrated at times, rather than cultivating those good morals instead to give up; that was another era of my life, now I am just too far gone to “fix me up”. But that notion, if it alights, is only so that we might rewind, rediscover, repent where we have been willful or disobedient, and learn that God is Lord of great overall self-composure and self-portrayal. Our picture of ourself is of a saint, each of the believers a saint. And as such, possessed of time and patience to Learn, to indulge in the frustrated rest and plea for some end to the torture. We are too tired at times to do our bidding, our latest calling. But we believe, and we discern, and we see out of inchoate forms something non-self-righteous forming. We are indeed good people. We are indeed reckoning with a fisherman called Christ, who bid us seek with confidence in our own skin, the least and the lost. We do modest deeds of service, in hope of greater choate formation, on some mystery ride. The mystery is that we do use warlike caution and prudence, whilst also already celebrating the marriage feast. We do know that on the other side of an act of discipleship is a rich reward unseen for now. So we are those Believing and Handed Over unto Christ to cheer one another and remind one another that each of us has a form and a character needful of one thing: to serve and to form, to call and to fellowship, to fight and to shelter our neighbor.