2024-02-24 A Meditation on Speed
“31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Ro 8:31-39 ESV)
The pick-me-up speed with which world events become home events, on our doorstep and affecting us in the daily and in the existential: our existential frame a meeting of angst and patience, us seeking Meaning and finding war, finding rather sad contracts or negotiations, yet ones we long ago signed up for: we are prepared and we are engaged, no strangers to the soldier’s last stand or rather daily sacrifices. We are healed and healers, no stranger to the fact Life Goes On. We are minding our own business and then things happen; life changes; our listless searching becomes an Answer overwhelming and confrontational. We are confronted, and Rise Up. We are called, and Sign Up. We are learning, and Testify. To the wondrous service of the King. To the belonging and fact nothing can take us from the love of Jesus. To the fact we worried or were angst-ridden, only to discover patience and personal mastery, personal devotions not dismissed nor learning curves too high nor fears quite being our judge. We are judged by no one, even as sadly the ups and downs of life do give strange license to the stranger, when instead we should take better accounting of the Big Picture. No slaves to the whim or fancy of a peer, but rather steadfast and composed, all the more so as war lands on our own doorstep in some form or another. War is not the end of our days but rather the beginnings. We are anxiety-free because suddenly all things were in synchronicity. All things were suddenly Gently Calling, even as our own inner compass finally felt a call to Serve and to Stand Tall. Suddenly the absence of the guilt-trip evoked in us our own recognisance, duty-bound and self-correcting. We self-correct as we Learn, as we Stand Up, as we marvel that no trials will take from us Life Eternal, music from a passing car just one sign of strange overcoming and of Life being both fleeting but also being steadfast, honoring the aged and the long-sufferers, honoring the children as much as the long-time citizen of the community. Playgrounds filled and the greetings of a passing stranger. The grateful and restful commute home each day on a temporarily peace-filled subway car. All these things over and against our intuition that states all should be more cynically evaluated. All should be more perfunctorily judging. All should show less affection for those poor or poor in spirit. Who by our own self-chosen measuring rod do not quite today pass muster.
Our measuring rod then meets the Cross and begins, just begins, to eek out a sanctuary, a space, a homestead, holy. We are no slaves to inevitability, to fate, to disgrace, but welcomed this day, angst-ridden or patient, to dwell in the Here and Now, today’s worries sufficient for the day. What shall I do with my time? What shall be my position? How and why should I see the coming turmoil as no end but rather a beginning of life lived in service? Life lived in prayer and obvious outreaches, obvious helping hands, finally making some sense as to why all our goals and situations are drenched in sin. Suddenly the obstacle too high becomes one we’ve genuinely begun to master. We have seen a Cross, and it has spelt divinity. It has spelt simultaneity of the dastardly disgrace and the homecoming, the rest and the laud and honor of simply His love for us.