2023-06-20 A Meditation on the Business of Testimony

“14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil” (Dt 11:14 ESV)

“4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (2 Ti 4:1–5 ESV)

All of us are in the business of testifying; the fruit of time spent in prayer should be some allegiance to a Holy Spirit of God that has in time revealed prayer topics. Discussion topics. Meditation topics. We are bold in the knowledge, no matter what slippery slope presents itself, no matter what clamor or burden, that the foundational work is testimonial. It is testimony that rears its kind head, that stands in awe of God above, that permeates the soul with courage, with readiness, with the negation of self and the honorarium of Another Person.

Another, born and bred like us, each of us privy to a strange reestablishment of Encounter: it was these who raised me. It was these who made my childhood home. Nevermind our literal homestead and parental unit, family den, but our spiritual upbringing: when “Jesus saves” struck a chord. There was a time when we were sharp to observe and categorize so much experience as spiritual attack, time when we with courage and bravery boldly claimed that Name.

But the listlessness, the slippery slope, the distraction, the sense of having a full plate, no way to reason oneself back into a vivid and experiential faith: all this trembles, this devilish ennui disbands, this edifice crumbles, in the light of a thirsty or urgent appeal. We appeal, out of emergency binds. We are stark to point to our Trusted Man, Trusted Woman, at the right spot, at the helm, in total authority and command.

We are stark to testify, therefore. And in testimony to evoke an age-old dynamic: God for us; God the Lord of the harvest; God managing the details, we simply by voice and dream speaking into existence a world of friends and like minded travelers. Fellows and gals, together unafraid to break the seal, to commiserate amidst temptation, to go for broke. We fellowship and we discover, pray ourselves into, deeper wisdom, insight, inspiration, each agent of Grace tutored by same Holy Spirit, unto genius reactive movement, not slow to discover and unveil common thinking. Shared experience. Trusted no-man’s-land. For the stuff of testimony is evaded and dismissed. It is a testimony to a Person, one we find in each other’s calm demeanor or submission to the Spirit of the place, of the gathering, of the times.