2024-03-09 A Meditation on the Genuine Self

“4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:4-7 ESV)

Anyone’s golden key, the access to their person, the honest coming to the table, is a phenomenon elusive and also cherished, held dearly, hoped in, and regretted in its absence. For, we stare down an avalanche of querying, or of proposals to the effect something in life is amiss, but then in our private time, again with family or friends, we do reflect, and can discover that pan-human need for some answer, some reassurance, that we are fit for membership, no longer cursed or inept, but owning a Cross like His, like Christ’s, a phenomenon of being more than warm bodies, we are part of the Project, led by Christ or a deputy, led and not apologizing. We do not apologize for the certainty owned of Belonging and of Fitness for the task: we are reassured that God loves all, that we do not disappoint Him, that we do not leave Him longing for a little more let’s say juice from we his delegates and People.

To access this vulnerable side of the Man, the Woman, is to see wondrously satellites and constellations coming together, planets and orbits aligning, some blanket Faith that efficiency does exist, that there is ample room in each of our lives to be owner and possessed of that Peace Time, the hour of the day when strangely—perhaps because any would-be interrupter is asleep—we are greeting the early day, like those Apostles who ventured and discovered the Tomb to be empty. We are therefore no proud fools, no proud circumspect taciturns, but do surprise and alight upon an Ability the pain to talk through, the fears to fess up, the insecurity or dastardly hate for what the hour has delivered to our front door step, all becoming owned and mastered, through knowledge of His Cross, of His appropriateness in some settings and wild inappropriateness in others: like that film on His Passion that showed the twelve and master furtively scampering about amongst the wide breadth of people, yet we who are in the know knew this furtive cohort to be owning an Eternal Mission, a Message for the Ages, and yet we do not intervene when they are asked once more to apologize, to humble themselves, for “do you not know I could appeal and my Father in Heaven would send a dozen legions…” (Matt 26:53). It is a strange platform, then, to tolerate the homeless wanderer or the miscreant or the perennially off-kilter, because not that we think we are dealing today with Christ Himself, but because perhaps we are; perhaps when He does return, it shall be in a hidden majesty and a secret triumph. So we exercise the honest self-appraisal, but never becoming too fluid or florid in words, never forgetting the modesty and the personal caution, the desire to have less knowledge not more, in some matters of life together: for, knowing the impact someone has had on our life, is to bring holy things into the dynamo and reactor of our soul, where sin seeks its outlet, and righteousness fights a haggard battle.