2023-06-09 A Meditation on Untold Strength

“9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” (2 Co 1:9–11 ESV)

Strength. The days they are electric. The ways we adopt Christian teaching, these ways heal a wound, giving layer upon layer of healthy flesh. We can be tired one day, yet still speak from a straightforward, clean layer. From a bedrock. “It’s turtles all the way down,” being a comment on our quest for Ultimate Things: the earth is resting, held in place in the sky, on the back of the shell of a turtle. And that turtle is resting on the back of another turtle. That turtle on another turtle. Etc. You get the picture.

Innocent of evil: to recuperate, for that wound to turn to untainted colorful flesh, pink or brown, wan or shaded, is to witness miracle in action, that God resuscitates, heals the wound, better: makes the skin tougher for the fight, gives us unafraid reliance on those amphibious creatures, that we may better honor our Lord and Savior. Who cleansed us from our former sins. Who sees the smoky sky or the puzzling strategic burst, and reassures: today you shall be with me in paradise, to some, and you are freed from your former awkward self-doubts and self-incrimination. You can venture forth healed, layer upon layer of rejuvenated life, life together, life abundant, life floral and winsome. Life in the arms of a Savior.

Therefore when at half-capacity we are still stronger than the malignant tumor of the enemy. At bleary-eyed early dawn we are still innate with virtue and pluck, fighting spirit, no grasping effort to hold up a proper self-image. For it is sin we try to mask and to clasp furtively in the vicinity of, to hide out from what a plain spur of the moment speech might reveal. We dwell in the exotic territory of uprooted ill weeds. We dwell in the exotic bargain of one place to venture our rest, to lean on the soul of Another, to do so as our own soul Learns and Adapts and Reconciles with Peace and Healing, with untold imagery subtracted from our conscious thought, or no longer our sense of “Ultimate Things”.

So that, in that rest a dynamo internal and floral and winsome, gives florid response to the sin-couched enemy. For to be forgiven is to be copacetic. To be forgiven is to long for a resolution. To be forgiven is not to demure and point out our past errors; rather, it is a call immediately to step up to the plate. It is a call that we cannot dawdle or harp on those sins and that fatherly goodness which does forgive: no, we today are called to sally forth healed, layers upon layers of good and healed bodily ailments brought innocently to the would-be slaughter. Would-be, for God abides and shelters His people. Would-be, because “my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Co 12:9). Would-be, because the battle is wide: reporters and messengers for the fight do win hearts and minds back home, and this cushion, this bedrock, this encouragement, heals and strengthens.