“12 When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. 14 The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”” (Rev 6:12-17 ESV)

The goal once set then challenges as to a Religious or Christian bent: no matter how astutely the “right setup” is waited on, no matter how patiently the “true grit” is aspired to, the fight itself involves pain, incongruence, hazardous forays, nonsensical effects, and untold confusion. In that hour, it will be something Resurrected that survives, something Received from On High that imputes, something Designated by God that raises holy effect.

We are designated by God for a greatness unlauded, met in the trenches, that says “no worries” to all earthly ambition and earthly aspiration. We no longer need aspire after a crown: His Crown—the Cross—is ours now to bear. We no longer need aspire after honor and dignity: His excited foray, His lancing forth, His sallying unto Action, has the effect of discharging holy compunction: we are remade, for the sake of the lossy effort, over and above the accolades and honorariums.

True, to some go military honors, but these are but a glimpse into the Tomorrow God has in store for everyone. All who are militantly seeking Truth, shall be swept up in a Tomorrow unbelievable if mentioned in this same hour, but Real and True: that God is for us; that we are “understood” in all of our sins and worries; that He genuinely loves us in spite of our hiccups and awkward self-imagery. He is dastardly and courageously racing to the scene of the crime; nothing we raise up in prayer is too meek or meager for His attention. He attends to the Request, and we Rise Up as more than tolerated: as Blessed, as Established, as Loved On.

So therefore to Tomorrow’s War, the Christian finds miraculous Invite to sojourn, the wild exposures, the hours long walk around town, all this and is our Center compromised? Others seclude themselves from the Front, not so eager about having to incorporate passing murmurs or judgmental glances. But we, we are primed for a Frontline not suicidal, but rather non-concerned with Dying: we are not making so-called “life” and “death” the final arbiter, but rather “Principle” and “Cause”. We fight for the flag, and better to “die” a martyr than to live a mediocre witness. That is, better to follow Christ and the disciples than to live out a compromised, denying, unprincipled reality.

Only this is a high aim, not easily afforded to all who thus desire it. What each of us can do, as well, is to repent of the Ambition, to repent of the dissatisfaction with what impetus and calling we are crowned with, we are knighted with, we are sent forth with. God is our playmate in the mind, and is our entertainment figure in the soul. We know well that having once tasted the Goodness of His marriage feast, immediately we will be tried with boredom, with distraction, with forgetfulness: we, of all people so blessed, so blessed as to have others jealously seek our own Make and Giftedness, Posture and Belovedness; others are resentful, perhaps, yet then our own hypocrisy for being dissatisfied and Jonah-like, bored. But never does this have the final say, as our Word for the day is Chutzpah, is Courage, is Gladsome Service. Undying, not worried about life and death but glad to Believe in a Tomorrow somehow not just “postwar” but “post exploitation”, the War having been launched due to exploitations and enslavements and invasions. One day, soon perhaps, that will become Evident, and we will be called upon to Serve. Whether soon or not, we do service to our communities by having that time of Prayer, by having faith in our designated Worldview, fasting from some exposures in order the better to lance forth Principled and unslandered, unaffected, uncompromised. We have this Truism and Center of Being as ours to own, because He owned it in a Certain footing and Determined cadence, unto His Cross.