2023-11-17 A Meditation on Spacious

“42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Ac 2:42–47 ESV)

To operate is to reach a spacious place that lets us be us vis-a-vis our mandate, our determination, our goal, of honoring the Law. We long to uphold the law of goodness, to accomplish, to satisfy, to go large. But this excellence comes about through the millennium’s, the epochs, the status place, strange pockets of Grace. There, the evolutionary lunge occurs. There, the shaping and reshaping, the twists and the turns, gesticulate, point to, honor with frame of mind and of body, a Higher Goodness: the Goodness we as created souls, do ourselves create.

The operation, then, is in a world that changes on a dime. The operation, then, is to appeal, to appeal, to appeal once more, and suddenly to be found not lacking, not lazing about, not distracted, when the Man Above looks in. When the society around us suddenly expresses interest. When our Project begins to catch the winds or march into a new spacious arena.

The arena is ours to secure because the arena has a Holy Spirit who is territorial, some spirits tied to time and place, the haunted house being the adverse form of this, but for us, for what matters, the blessed healing waters: act now, Soldier! For the waters are stirred up; the world is eager to forgive; the comely maiden or stalwart lad will not withhold from you what Peace and Understanding, Space and Time, was afforded unto themselves.

All this to say, operate as a victor amidst a world measured and quantified, bearing down on each individual with global tasks and heaviness, making us feel our time and circumstance does not belong to us proper, but belongs to an overarching Task that makes nervous and decrepit the listener. No, today we listen unto an unusual yet prolific Peace; nothing Man, Woman has done has been done apart from this escape valve called Joy and called Prerogative. The Christian’s prerogative is to tell the story with as much honesty as possible, for none will believe if it is said that Christ’s homestead, the Spirit’s time-space, the Father’s firm hold, are all at work in this or that success story.

Of an operation underway. Of a project that soaked itself in the capacious spacious mild climes of a Workplace. For here operates the soldier, unto chiefs and commanders, unto brethren and sistren in arms, unto the news that even we who would put in a learned, rudely habitual word for ourselves—we who have learned to boast—would cease trying to measure just who is more sinful; our sins are our doubts; our sins are our pride; our sins are our dwelling places sometimes, where we dwell self-assured rather than awe-struck. Where we dwell lazy rather than diligent and On Watch. We watch because the time is nigh, the measurements are being made, the uniform is being outfitted; today we plead as though our last chance or only chance. Today we put heart on paper as though none had ever before heard such gracious words. Yet they are there to discover, in Scripture, in hastily arranged booklet and testimonials. In books of martyrs and books honoring of the works of saints. In so much, such that we today enter that spacious realm, the dwelling place secure, secured unto creativity and a gentler race or gender or species whom all encountering thus love and hold and cherish. Because life is not the race-to-the-top we speak of in lazy conversation: life is an operation that will change the world. Life is a new day that will see highwater marks replaced with commonplace expectations, our best selves now serialized and minted en masse. People lunging forward in evolutionary war, yet never forgetting the total depravity of any would-be adherent of the Law.

We are totally depraved because somewhere in that sense of being cursed, is a sense of gladsome reversal of the loserdom perversion. Gladsome reversal of that strange fascination with evil. Gladsome change from the love affair with death and dying. God is not weak, that He cannot give unto us covetous souls the very doctrine that heals: you, O man, O woman, are trapped in sin, of a sort that makes one smart and react, yet today a Man who understands this, has Himself become the curse. He has Himself delved into the mess. He has Himself made of our feeble higher sentiments, a safe and spacious Place in which to explore and be loved and have sanctuary.