โYou therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.โ 2Pt3v17-18
The life of spiritual substance is considered through morpho/spatio/kinesiological contrasts. Consider.
๐๐ฃโโ โ..not carried away..โ
๐ You are here, and very here and on purpose. Your location is non-random, donโt be carried from it.
๐ You have been brought to this place, to this understanding, to this conviction.ย
๐ There are flows, forces, streams, currents, rip tides, eddies, magnetisms, slippery slopes.ย
๐ช๏ธ There are mental vortices, distractions, diversions, red herrings, wild goose chases, labyrinthine ways of wasting life is spatio-intellectual ephemera misc and vanity.
๐ซ The universe is non-static, and we are beings subject to movement. Iโll float down the Liffey if Iโm not swimming against it. Swim against it.
๐ In the world of words, ideas and self-knowledge - you are less weighty, and the wind is more gusty, than you think. Be wary.
๐จ There is an away to which you could be carried. Donโt.
๐ฌ๏ธ There is a carrier who would rather you were away. Donโt.
๐บ๏ธ Maturity has this geospatial quality of thereness and fixity. A conscientious objectivity, decidedly anchored, confidently of a place, rooted, settled, and not carried away.ย
๐บ๏ธ Maturity is there, publicly findable, like a bus-time-table. You can return to it, you can set your watch by it. You can direct lost people to it. You can direct lost people by it.
โ๏ธ๐งโโ โ.. and lose .. stability..โ
โ๏ธ You are stable, you stand firm, you bear weight, you brace against the precipice, you stabilise others by your broad base, deeply founded, firmly buttressed, cross-braced.
โต You have ballast in your spiritual boat, you have a self-levelling gyroscopic ability to land on your feet.
๐ You have a spiritual sense of balance, you hold a tea tray of complexity stably, your eyes are fixed on Godโs eschatological horizon, your life is orderly, your verticals are plum straining upward in Christ.
๐ช๏ธ The world is Koyaanisqatsic, out-of-balance, out-of-kilter. The climate is a runaway train. Capitalism is untethered. Cultural order is in free-fall.
๐ฐ๏ธ The relativisation of everything has created a context of zero-gravity. But you, you have gravity. You are subject to authority. You are in authority. You are a prince in a Kingdom, a delegate in a hierarchy.ย
๐๏ธ Maturity has a structural dimension, a carrying capacity, an observable constancy, a reliable level steadiness.
๐ฑ Maturity is a seedbed for other maturity, the groundwork and foundations sufficiently stable for safe use.
๐ฑ๐ณ โ..But grow..โ
โ๏ธ The antidote to instability and drifting away is growth.
โ๏ธ This is not nothing. There is no standing still, there is no steady-state Christianity.
โ๏ธ Therefore grow. Bigly. Be extra.
โ๏ธ If thereโs more-than, you can be more-than. Thereโs more. Therefore grow.
โ๏ธ Living things grow. You are among the living. Therefore grow.
๐พ Be a faith monster. Be a spiritual giant. Pray big prayers. Live an inexplicable life.ย
Grow.ย
Grow in Grace
Grow in Knowledge.
Grow up.ย
Grow generally.
๐ช๐โโ๐ As we considered in Lk2: โJesus "grew" and "became strong" and was "filled with wisdom" and.., like Team America, this needs a montage. The Exploding Calendar trope, set to Eye of the Tiger, we see JC manning up. When we pop out the end of our extended adolescence, what have we become? What manner of manhood have we acquired? Jesus' incarnation involved birth and death, weakness and temptation, family and friendship, hunger and thirst, dirt and cleaning, anger and intellect, physical pain, emotional pain, and in this verse, 'growth'. To grow is inevitable. But to grow up to become other than merely boys-who-can-shave is not inevitable. Being human involves a growing into an adult form of the species, quantitatively bigger, but what is the quality of being a grown-up, which Millennials are accused of delaying? Many answers could be discussed, but these verses offer these three for starters:
~ 1. Strength. What did Jesus need strength for? His calling in life was to die for sinners - no strength needed? Additional to that, to preach - no strength needed? And to perform healing - no strength needed? This popular construction of an abridged Jesus in a body-optional mode of his embodiment offers very little to provoke we the reedy, cybernetic and metrosexual towards a muscular Christianity. Jesus grew strong. Christian! Become strong, increase in vigour, Do Hard Things! (Alex & Brett Harris)
~ 2. Wisdom. Against the myth of the genius, the magic-thinking shortcut to the right answer, there is a wisdom into which one grows. Jesus _was being filled.._ present-participle of a process ongoing. In an wiki age of networked mind, what does one bother to commit to memory, what mental fight is worth the effort, what sort of a knower does one want to become? In an age of mere data processing, what is wisdom? It is still "the art of living skilfully..", it still begins with "the fear of the Lord.." and it remains a prerequisite for mature adulthood. Would that we, 41 and the rest of our generation would set our hearts on a sage gravitas, slowly earnt, long fermented and hard tested. Wisdom wars for true truth, against constructions of reality based on unrelational knowledge and disembodied being. Jesus grew in a wisdom.
~ 3. God's favour. Indefinite teenagers: there but for the Grace of God go I. The answer to growing up is not simply to work harder and do more. The gift, the privelege, the resource to be the grownup you are called to be, this comes from God. Receive it by faith. Seek it. Flex the muscles of faith, grow into the use of it, know more the need of it, so seek more of it. And so then Lk2v52: "increase in this grace and favour of God". God grant us grace to grow up.โ Lk2v39-40
What is in your Rocky montage?