“18 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. 4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. 5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. 6 And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” 7 And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. 8 Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. 9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” 11 And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. 12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, 13 saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” 14 But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. 15 But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” 16 And he drove them from the tribunal. 17 And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this.” (Ac 18:1–17 ESV)

Vast oceans of separation may already be forming and coalescing, because the Gap between the Law and the Gospel, is proud, is self-righteous, is uncontrite, is mechanistic and leaned upon, and causes scoffing at any Suggestion of Change. The New Believer, by contrast, is basking in an ocean of Liberation from theological potholes. He or she is Basking because All Things—things we never knew we needed—are on the table before her or him.

To cope with vastly separate Ideologies is the special purview of Christ and His Invite to the Kingdom. Simultaneously we are haggard and forlorn, hopeless in this life and defeatist around Any and all Forward March, and yet we are Bliss and Calm around the Certainty God has a plan. God also listens to us, and here the law arises: have we let our friend down? Have we gone the backwaters and endlessly changing but never Arriving route?

Magic and Special Expeditionary Vision: people Learn the fear of God when they graduate from junior operator status. God is strangely memorable in visage, peace in perfunctory stride, calm in tending the garden, exuberant in all the ancillary Extensions of the Human Form a deity strikes. We see fascinating Extensions because Mankind has learned to operate in Hive Mode, in Platoon Coalescence, in strange combinations of Groupthink and Submission: that Delight in being able to Submit minus haggard sense of our own personal Duties. Our sense of Duty: this is because we have a Calling special to we ourselves, and yet there is Hope of a New Day.

An enemy works theologically just as well as we do, positing some Receiver of everyone’s Complaint: dear God, isn’t this just rich? Isn’t this just a plaintive appeal to our notion of parenthood, now deified? Yet the true Submissive, strangely knows God is both Omnipotent, and slow to Act. God works in eons and generations. God parents via shoving us out of the nest. God is a parent always curmudgeonly about Ease and Sinful Indulgence, but quick to enamor and Love on simple testimony and presentation.

Therefore the banks of typists and the Big Wall of television screens: the Mission Central has in fact Come Alive and Become Truth, even though it is je ne sais quoi as to a right and formal Delineation of what the economics are, what the Mission Statement, what the Means of War (hint: spiritual!). The armies of typists and the solo hiker on the beautiful lakeside, the poet and the artist, are just as Effective and Perfunctory, as any Headship On High. We lead via Instantiating unheard of new Spiritual Gambits, yet never go airy and sky-bound beyond recalling it is about Land and Principles so grounded. It is about a Right to Live peacefully and Enabled, educational freedoms and capitalistic Rewards, alongside Even-handed fair rules and social structures or support systems.

We bite. We have pluck. We have punch. Because where we stride, our footprints in the sand, are crazily Enabled and Forward, no time to hesitate and go cautious-mode. We lamp, and bask, and Enlarge our perimeter, because it is the fallout and Logical Progression emanating from Basic Homely Contrition. Having once gone Pan, gone Community-Wide, gone Servant-Minded, we never again Fear to have offended the Holy Ones. We have our fear of God built right in to our entire Demeanor and Stride. We are mirrors of His Goodness. We are Emissaries of His grandeur. We are reflecting, and betraying in the right sense, by our Demeanor and Stride, that lofty things are at work in the Invisibility, in the authorial structures and responsibilities we Bear and Carry. We are also never going Reservist-Mode: we go front line, at the head of the troops who rally, the first to repent, like David in Holy Scripture, by way of leading the people; ours is a task happily Busy, blessedly Called and Occupied so as not to go Lazy or unthoughtful. Our dreamful series of Encounters with friends past, these remind us to have Faith: no dream is within our creative spell itself, but is inspired, and reveals the good will of a long lost friend, colleague or patron.