Accepting Responsibility
Meditations | 004
This is John Connor. If you are listening to this message, you are the Resistance. ~ Terminator: Salvation
It’s about time we looked ourselves in the mirror and got a little serious. The times are grim, so they say. They tell me we’ve never faced such a perilous moment, and that our leaders and betters are to blame. Perhaps they’re right, but you won’t find me losing much sleep over it anymore. I lost my hope in any of those feeble powers coming to save me a long time ago. I have only one anchor of faith, and all else is known to be rather unreliable. So while we wait in hope for the glorious appearing, we ought to be found about our business. The fact that you’re seeing these words sets you apart from the vast majority of people who will spend their entire lives complaining about the problems they can see or unaware of problems at all. Whether you accept the burden or not, you are part of a tiny remnant of people who are aware, able and available to enter the fight. It’s no good looking around for the adults. It is up to us.
[The Boy:] Because we're the good guys.
[The Man:] Yes.
[The Boy:] And we're carrying the fire.
~ Cormac McCarthy, The Road
It is 2011 and an idealistic and self-centered young man is drinking his first draught from the lifelong cup of loss. At the graveside of a loved uncle, the family shattered by a rapid passage from life to death. The brother of the man in the casket opens the car door, murmurs “I’m going to need you and your boys.” One last journey needed before the final setting out for home. Weak hands in concert hoist the holy oblong craft, six amateur psychopomps the only available link between the hearse and the hereafter. It’s no good pleading weakness or insufficiency when the call comes, because these pleas do nothing to mark us apart from the crowd of humanity. They do nothing to change the urgent need. Adulthood in the mundane bearing of burdens, sanctification and consecration by virtue of existence and proximity. Weeping and smiling as he realized that all you needed to do, in the end, was be there.
If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not. ~ C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
Plumb the depths of your personal spiritual well, because it is from those depths that you must drink when the unimaginable becomes your burden. If you are insufficient, and you must find yourself to be woefully so, where will you go? Look for the helpers was a reassuring mantra in our childhood, but now others are looking for you. And let me add this singular challenge: if God exists (and He does), then you ought to expect yourself to be the answer He sends to someone else’s desperate prayer. Since He has apparently chosen to work through the actions of human beings, don’t be surprised when you are confronted by His call. The funny thing about these circumstances is that they force themselves on our heart with inescapable intensity, once we realize the enormity of the need. You probably already have two or three situations or people in mind as you read this. I’m not adding any pressure to what you already feel every day, I’m just encouraging you that you cannot ever look away, because your presence and efforts are and can only be your responsibility.
Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” ~ 1 Samuel 3:1-4
Of course you’re tired, and of course it’s unfair to ask anything more of you. But this isn’t about fairness, it’s about necessity. These moments strip our faith bare until we discover Who we are actually trusting in. Clinging to yourself seems an insecure proposition. But don’t hold out hope in a retreat from the battle line to happier times of ignorance and repose. Your immediate local reality is your God-given responsibility. It is a zone of operations in which each of us will one day perish fighting. There are no replacements for you, precious little experience can make the fight easier, and the path forward is filled with suffering. You can’t be a real optimist until you’re staggering underneath the burden, laughing with wobbling knees and shaking aside hot tears. Bow your head, and accept the lot He has given you under the sun. Joy comes in the morning.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
~ 2 Corinthians 4:7
There are different regimes: crisis, and thriving. Your life will fall in and out of both regimes. The world falls in and out of both regimes. Sometimes your life and the world fall into the same regimes at the same time, sometimes they're at opposite regimes.
During a period of world thriving, it is the responsibility of thriving people to coordinate their energies toward a virtuous cycle of expanding prosperity for all. Higher order thinking and planning can occur.
During a period of crisis, it is the responsibility of thriving people to protect the most vulnerable in order to stave off a vicious circle. Higher thinking and coordination is no longer feasible and delays will lose time.
During personal crisis, your sole energies are to survive, regardless of whether the world is thriving or in crisis.
Earnest as always, Mr. Pr0ph3t