2024-10-29 A Meditation on The Way

“2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (James 1:2-18 ESV)

The Law says: “Be cheerful”. Grace says, “Start elsewhere”. We start in illuminating Man’s bondage, the Bound Christian Spirit. Indeed, today’s bonds may be heavier than at first we acknowledged: our joy, our pattern exuberance, our street-side gladsome tidings; all this is the fruit of fools, correct? Today’s bonds may mean things that we can only pray through. Today’s bonds may mean things such as utter rejection of our spirits in the light of utter Preference for common disdain, for patent yawning, for reluctant half-hearing that leads to rejection outright.

To alight upon a Dynamo most Divine, is the outworking of that catch-all Good Tidings which do say: all love shall meet persecutions; all Service shall meet the Cross; all friendly suffrages shall meet betrayal; all this, young Christian, shall spell imperfect bleary-eyed frontline War, gladly going to the sound of the trumpet blast minus any Assurance or calm Calculated Rest. We have no proof that we are doing the right thing, only that these are our orders and only that there was a time when we had some gladsome assurance. Some patent Proof we were Basically Sound. Some of that neighborly cheerful greeting that mocked all class warfare, all life at the bottom, all striving to be more than we were cut out to be.

For God cuts us out to be man and woman in outright mockery of all Class Warfare. God uses little experiences to build up grand Presence. We are Assured of basic gladsome tidings, so that none shall dishearten our Courage and our Trust. The one with limo and furtive appearance so wealthy in the neighborhood, is one we literally feel no threat towards: we even can befriend such as these. But first: our proper Basic Calling is to remember, recall that at all times we are about to fall into infamy and sin. All times test our mettle around Pride and lazy accession.

Grace starts elsewhere than in the demand to “Be cheerful”. Instead, we have ridden a wild hay ride of self-doubts mixed with selfish pride, the third way finally being found out because perhaps of seeing an Impossible Climate: our world, our nation: early dissuaded and doubtful, with calm and excited words of a first witness, which witness steamrollered over the more sensitive, the more Christian, aspects of the testimony. And then the aghast horror spread like gangrene, to the utter damnation—if this world will judge aright—of half the souls out there, and the final basic ways the remainders were hid in the cleft of the rock, were recipients of some basic Peace and Beauteous Fruit that at the time made no sense, was not cause for boasting, was not cause for pride, was not personally elevating. So the soldier’s friendship spelt Salvation. The soldier’s happening home base spelt gladsome life at the Front. At this Front was a third way, an unseen, unimagined Way. It began in the utter defeat at the hands of today’s society, that is, defeated by the horror stories that after all could have toned down a bit: it ain’t quite as bad as they say. And man’s sin, this is far worse than they say. But our Estate is with Christ, and the two are inseparable, each potential Apostle, each part of the same comet or its tail, no rivalry, gladly elevating our Christ and our King. Or we ourselves, for a moment’s time, all that patient reverence and duty to a loving Parent’s rubric or routine or habitual Way, being what saves us upon God the Father peering in.

Art is easy to give in to, that is, to make a fuss about it being All Things. And no Hollywood, Bollywood, or art world “will” is strong enough to elevate the downtrodden quite as much as one might hope for; it was merely an idea, after all. We all of us had mere ideas. And turning outwards, back against back, we realize finally a Better War to fight. A war not of nation against nation, but smarter: a war with ourselves, with our middling traits so wicked, with that hubris that finally can emerge even as we were formerly the blighted and downtrodden, the ones best prepared by hardship to Serve. All this, and still we can go the way of the pessimist, not finding our day’s Joy and Cheer quite, even though it is ours to own, ours to use in ways that ape an enemy, because they resent our goodness and our Cheer, our Joy and our insensible Fruits. They puzzle over the fact we aren’t simply submissive in light of our more meager estate. Scoffing, they hurl insults and excited jokes or “in the know” confidences. Scoffing, they indeed hurt us, but as we say, “Hey, that hurt!” we like that starving poor child somewhere in our unjust world, can look skyward and Dream Big; as we lay dying we can See Tomorrow and dream it up. As we lay forgotten, we can look heavenward and find ourselves in a new haste and eager new role to serve at the High Table, at God’s Missional Team’s home base, in a Tomorrow Faith that our souls are eternal and come and go in ways so humbling but so empowering.