“8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. 11 Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. 12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Rom 13:8-14 ESV)

Each of us has the power to absolve. Power torches, load bearers, excited discourse meets substance: we are basing all truth claims on the Rock. So the Christian invents the pastoral office, if it isn’t already live. The pastoral office, this is how we reason through the day’s prompt: “Let me think some Christian thoughts today”. Where have we found home? How have we felt Okay in our shoes? Who has illuminated us, injected us, talked us up, with joy and heartfelt Belonging? Not condescending to us so much as letting us glow in their comet’s trails, in their radiance, in their Purposeful exaltation. They are Purposeful, we are amped and now ready to go.

Tomorrow brings with it the apparition now of a distant sadness that looms. We see something that half prompts us to ask, should I be mourning rather than doing this Christ thing, this Celebrating His radiance thing? As if! As if we could always be caught not off guard! Always trying to get ourselves prepped so as not to be caught unawares! But here is the trust fall, here is the Luminescence, here is the Belonging. That Pastor’s office: the Pastor in Chief is in!

Tomorrow brings with it things we can’t say for sure this way or that way: Christ Himself said as much. What we do know is Christ and the Godhead Striving: up in arms, mighty arms at that, against a Foe. And we His children… we are rather subdued—at least, calmed—in that light of the Heavenly War. God is both Vulnerable to great advances and setbacks, and All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Purposeful. All-Loving, too. To rub shoulders with a Christ figure, to bask in their Luminescence and in their Warmth, this is to find Him delighted, of delightful countenance, even as He is all-targeted and all-attacked.

We, too, are attacked when once we’ve raised the right banner. There is always something we… here’s too that morning’s query: “What Christian thoughts can I entertain today?”… something we are half-persuaded to aver from, to leave in the hands of the others out there, the powers-that-be. However to go deep in prayer… this is an invite to Begin to be a bit illegal to those powers-that-be: we think radical and momentous thoughts. We suddenly remind ourselves to Stand Tall. We are suddenly apprised of massive class distinctions, starting with how we ourselves judge those we meet. We are apprised that life is to many already set in its course: one generation or a hundred shall pass like the evolutionary murk on lake bottom eventually standing—leaping from the water—tall. Life may have already written off this generation as an “in-between time”. Yet we never concede as much. If we can greet the day, if we can hike the trail, if we can humor the peers, then those powers-that-be stand to be caught surprised. God is for us, victory being nearer now than when we first believed.