2024-11-07 A Meditation on Weariness

“2 Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4 I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. 5 For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. 8 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. 9 As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.” (2 Cor 7:2-9 ESV)

Jesus wearied, and we too weary. To know oneself may be a certain composure or confidence around having “money in the bank”: we bank on it, we perform services that—if only we could be honest with ourselves—we are proud of. We waltz through the vast majority of days with pluck and verve. Somewhat. Always our prognosis is at best delicate. Our self criticisms, our binds impossible to undo, our taciturn nature around certain others: balance this just with sheer gratitude, for the loving home base, for the natural “Getting along”, “Siblings” to one another; no, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. We are awaiting Tomorrow, when Today’s overwrought tired melancholia shall put paid to the bank accounts past, reminding in no uncertain terms that the Good Thing is still just around the corner.

Yet we don’t believe it. We are tuckered out and really, if ever there was a need for Jesus to get up and say a few words, now is it. The apologies, having been made—“You nearly got me fired!”—are actually a major milestone: we warm up in our inner beings when the cipher, formerly broken, is remade intact.

Tuckered out, but this too shall pass: we are not in the game with the intention of fixing all motives and directives. Christian Faith is in a fighting frame or balancing act: wrought and decisive unto a cultural aspect, milieu, we avidly go to war with. In our beings. In our patient, sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening (see Mary and Martha). Oh yeah, and in yesteryear, a former time, I was taught to hate on the smug self-righteous run-of-the-mill Christian! Hear now that doubt: that when enemies are made, it is all we can do not also to reject the formerly shared faith. But preserve it we must.

Hear, good soldier, that Jesus insists that He is the answer, and our faith—if it is blasphemy to the casual pewsitter—is worth our very existence. We fight for it. We also put on every meekness and effort at plain Kindness, to deuce the devil and his minions. To make jaw-dropping consternation and puzzlement out of the casual pewsitter. “But…! But…!” They protest ours is too brash or certain, too unlikely for us to believe that in fact God chose the meek and the loveless in our midst, to raise up an army around a metaphysical tower, which tower is certainly under attack.

That is, today’s Soldier is possessed of a Living Spirit, and has the bold composure to know that everyone he or she meets, it is either they who minister to us, or we who minister to them: but in all things, no uneducated fascinations or notions of first submission. Their “Submission” must be an educated one. It must understand that either we minister to the friend, or the friend ministers to us, but without reductio to a servanthood. Our insistence is that the die be cast around Us who minister, with a Word, with a Season of gladsome report, with absolutely die-hard brash and bold Composure amidst the wagging heads of the wags and the childish “he said, she said” or merry telling distressed tunes of the children. We are bold to hear the parent who starts with a “Thank you”, to Heaven, to the crowd, to those who labor under the effect of no-conversation or topics in mind: yet simply to speak up when a crisis finally arrives, simply to lead and be dutiful when the dice fall into their places and we can make that plain Concession unto Honoring a Heavensent Agent Above. God the Father, in Holy duality with the Mother, and our intended recipient of our ministerial friendship, is rattling and demon-possessed of a very different Existential Status, perhaps. Not in fact knowing the Father Above. Not in fact confident that this one, this beloved child, has not imagined the whole affair. But imaginings we have not: to dream big is to occupy in Tangibles, and Realities all of which—dreams included—are True on some metaphysical eventual Plain. And that dying Composure most sublime, teaches us to Waken, to Murmur and Quiver with Holy Inspiration, to be that Agent who rises up but only when a crisis appears, not because of laziness, but because of All-Encompassing delegation or rather appreciation, of each of these our roomies and citizens of the Father’s Kingdom.