2023-12-17 A Meditation on Working While it is Day
“5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. 8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.” (Ps 130:5–8 ESV)
“9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.” (Jn 21:9–14 ESV)
Some call it dispensation: making money while it is day, for night is coming when no one can work (Jn 9:4); there are entire ways of relating and of being that change overnight. The moralist still has pluck surrounding their lived experience: such as these shall not make any concessions to the flesh. Such as these are in no “experimental” liberalism surrounding the sins of the neophyte, the learner, the disciplined toddler.
Or it may be a father or mother’s stern advice rather than one’s own time-bought education, which structure and morality seemed to be on the wane in society, trickling away, dishonored, turned to excuses and false legitimacy. For, to assert the self, as the one and only arbiter of causality and of lifestyle, is to make an idol, one that leaves us panicky and floored by the ravages of time.
Therefore as all stare in wonder at the Christ-event of this Advent, some are making mint, printing money while it is still day, as in, entrepreneurial spirit to attend, to say “faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse the kisses of an enemy” (Prov 27:6); to shape and carve, to structure and elevate, one whose first days were mysteriously safeguarded, babe in manger, scene of tamed animals, scene of visiting Magi, scene of forgiven father and mother, forgiven for not giving more to their Son.
And night is coming when none shall work. When they shall say to the mountains, “Fall on us”. When new “dispensation” of authority supplants and replaces so much anxious enmity, the culture wars beginning to forgive and become malleable, less cause for dire prophecies and more cause for a hearty shared breakfast, such as the morn of Christ’s Resurrected appearance to the fishermen. “Oh, so you conceded everything to the cross; you went back to your former occupation… thinking me dead and the message a far off dream.”
The learner becomes their received Wisdom, that being a slightly different phenomenon from Morality. Wisdom being the adjunction to labor heartily, as all deeds done in the Lord are blessed. Wisdom being the reminder to jump in whilst the waters are still stirred up, the forgiveness washing over us if only we have a little reverent fear of how tomorrow’s mercy might be different—though still promised—from today’s. Isn’t that something? That God in His perfection can vote for times and seasons as some being “better” for contrition than others, yet still to make all things perfect in the end, whenever we reach our end-of-tether and repent. Both-and. Simultaneously hastened to the Altar, and mercifully encouraged to explore. For to explore, to seek meaning in life, to seek love and understanding, all these things against them is no Law.
The moral pursuit, then, is on the flipside of the Grace coin. The coin rattles to the pavement and we, of all people winners and blessed, are Saved. Because our innards were “good”? Or were utterly corrupt, yet dream we did. Our moral compass was somehow not a cause for pride, just for plain-speaking upright desires or judgments. We don’t judge, yet we have a chip on our shoulder around a few things. The degradations of the priesthood, a corrupt confraternity. The failures to love unto a merciful portrait. Self portrait Divine, so lacking if mercy is absent. The desire for yet a little more of the porridge, the Gracious command, “Eat”. It is no poison nor denial of Christ’s fast, but a reminder to be hearty for the morrow, for the sequel, for the “dispensation” when suddenly we are behind cannon or in the trench, and our money is as many filthy clattering coins, useless, and we labor now for the honor of a Flag, refusing to moralize as the final arbitration, but with Divine Humility to pace ourselves around that turning cog-wheel called Grace. We are Grace because with smile on our face it is the sum and the substance of an Experience Holy and Uplifting. Glimpsed for a moment, awaited for a lifetime, generations of work suddenly regaled, honored by our forward call of battle, of racing to the sound of the horn, of emerging in New Digs, night having come, yet with it the promise of the Morn, our solemn rites as simple yet earnest as they come.
Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts as in the rebellion. Today, be those built up and with confidence in Something Passed On, or learned, or the fruit of education that some deem all-sinful, yet to us is a strange gifted package of God turning rebellion unto Goodness. This hour in love, in prayer, hopeful and awaiting the watchmen of the morning. As simple as a greeting in the night, or those workings whose mechanism is suddenly revealed to the child whom all society patiently waits on, and carefully educates, saving the best for last.