2024-01-23 A Meditation on Tides

“25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matt 6:25-34 ESV)

The tides they rise and the tides they fall. Have you reached a breaking point? Rather a breathing point. Some things remain, even as Man fusses about and gets anxious as to whether things were done right or were done in error. We align ourselves according to the best of our insight, we even go to war during a process underway, in formation, being discerned. That is no concession to the devil who says we know not what we are doing, rather it is a testament to our Father in Heaven who is calm through the storm and who preserves first this one and then that one, unto the good end of Teaching, of Challenging, of Forming. So why panic if tomorrow’s tides are today’s tides, and tomorrow’s panic attacks are today’s preemptive adoption of Calm?

Kept abundantly humble, the Christian soldier fights an enemy unseen: inner calm disturbed, prayed right back into action, the angular jaunt and precipitous lunge; these things awaken us to a forlorn place and winnowing hour and headache called Doubt. The doubts of others or their anxious questions, these form and reform and cultivate us around both fellowship and isolation. They cultivate us around no longer playing the blame game, but loving on one another even as we grimace, wince, squint at horrid evocation of those bedrock facts: that the tides will still rise and fall; that we still in situ, in the body, in our frame, do breathe in and out in rhythm. Our breathing, at the ready, spacious soul is anxious for the watch, dutiful for the patrol, and has learned of a Peace and Stasis so rarely seen—if we are honest about it—in the status quo.

The status quo is sleepwalking on some levels, or perhaps therefore on all levels. The status quo is a wake-up call to cease fussing around some enemy “out there” and to do business and dialog with the somnambulant who muddle about snoring with sleep. Hear this day, of a God who Cares. Who does things behind the scenes such that we can live and breathe and thrive in Peace and Security. It is our overarching submission to authority, for all authority is put in place by God (Ro 13:1). Such is the consolation of the beggarly or forlorn, the weak and the enslaved. The wage slave, the slave to debtors, the silently oppressed, where disfavor aggressively ramps itself up around the victim; in these things those who cannot much “move”, do dance and flourish in light of the Gospel.

Then the peace and the patience, for the soldier to escape that bewildering sluggish sleepwalking spirit. To regain alacrity. To see the steps of the reasoning of the matter of the discovered, earned, matured wisdom. Wake up, O Man, O Woman! What good counsel was lacking some time past, today is ours to claim! No mockery of our hard work nor of our life’s purpose, is the work unfinished, cast off as if it were a burden. No, we return in due time to many things, but the wiser and formed. God has formed us. God watches over us.

The soldier on a cold night in the trenches may have many a life’s regret. Still, it is arbitrary and a matter of personal taste, how much and how far we go on the personal guilt trip and ill conscience. That is, all the world could be at hand, and yet still we would berate ourselves for some comical error past. We learn instead, by our Gospel Friends, by our cheered spirits, to soothe the conscience, to bless the discerning heart, in all this to laugh as they laugh and to overcome as they show determination to love even us by way of overcoming, even us in the throes of an error past, even us undeserving and impatient.

It is a matter of Principle that we see criticisms only as an inquisitive foe, and blessings as a due and earned (by His Cross) friend. That is, no error has befallen Man that cannot be bullishly or doggedly handed over to the Cross. We act with bullish force to abide in spirit and stasis, our spirit doggedly refusing even at the commencement of the Trial of Life, to concede a tittle or dot (Lk 16:17 KJV, ESV) regarding our Heavenly Estate as Blessed, as Loved past the point of no return, as needful of one thing: that we accept. Accept His Love borne in War, a War surrounding Man’s rightful place in the social upheavals and impatient judgments. The debtors and enslavers. The accusers and complainants. All these things so that we can alert and focused Awake, back where we first envisioned ourselves and pinched ourselves to see if it all was real: the trenches, the cold night, the Call to Daydream and to Imagine throughout the Night Hour on Watch. Where is there accusation and God is not present? Where is there unresolved conversation and God is not the third person of the triad? Where is there self-doubt and God is not vouchsafing His signature on the letter of our credentials?