2023-04-15 A Meditation on Turning Gold

“If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1 Co 3:15 ESV)

Some people seem to turn all they go through to mint. For the rest of us, though, it can be difficult to know just what we have, if anything, of worth. We nominally point to our faith, but that very same faith is feeling lackluster, like it only requires more and more dependence on a fleeting notion of God. We look for the “narrow way” because we fear that otherwise it is only a faith in our own powers. If each time we stand up we feel that a devil has knocked us back onto our hindquarters again, that is one way of us hearing “welcome to the club”.

We are welcome to take the high-minded road that genuinely accepts words of Scripture, as being that same “mint”-making of what things we encounter. We have accumulated without reserve. We have buttoned-up without caution. We have for once remembered, as in a personal memento to ourselves, that there was a time when we had not invested so much spiritual capital into our faith journey. When we were new believers. When we were just eeking out a search and a day’s reckoning with a whole new world. Yet at that time, did we feel any less inducted? Did we feel any less “wealthy”? So we look to the patriarchs, who had phases of life, dozens of years as shepherds or tillers of the land, and then nominative faith walks, such as the near sacrifice of son Isaac (Ge 22). These earned some spiritual capital via no too-holy-for-though faith journey, but with patent labors in the Lord, in the field, in the highways and byways, in the realm of another person’s kingdom, in fear of their safety, a fear met with deep vision when needed, the reassurance of a dream or a waking encounter, such as the trinity of men that Sarah, Abraham’s wife, prepared a meal for (Ge 18).

So back to our “narrow way”. It will cause us to reckon each day with a spiritual wrestling match, to return our waking thoughts to a peace that is elusive. Yet He has gifted us spiritual capital, not by way of proving ourselves saved, but by way of recreating the same equation of purposeful actions and stark, stoic, sober manners.