Strokes of Glory

Reason is treason.

More precisely, identifying an objective or justification for something means you have already surrendered to the Enemy of Souls. It means you’ve gone over to the Dark Side and deserted your God and all He gave you.

Today I am hoping the rain lets up for awhile. I intend to get out my mountain bike and ride a couple of hours, maybe more. I don’t really have anywhere to go; no matter which direction I choose, I’ve already seen it all because I’ve been doing this for years.

I’ve been doing it in part because I sensed a burden on my heart to become more physically fit. It was a moral demand of God on me. And at what point could I say, “I am fit and have completed the Lord’s command”? It’s never complete, because no matter how fit my body is, I could do more. So the call from God to engage in fitness training has no end point in this life. And who says the riding has to meet some intensive fitness goal?

Why would it matter to God in the first place? How does my fitness struggle bring Him glory?

If you know anything about fitness, you realize it’s a joy in itself. The powerful sense of connection you gain, even without recognizing the existence of your heart-brain or butt-brain, is hard to explain. It’s a sense that you are truly alive in a way otherwise impossible to experience. It’s not a question of how much you can lift, how far you can ride or run, or how long you can march down the road with only what you can carry. It’s the doing itself, never mind whether you reach a measurable goal.

Can you imagine how I treasure the adventures through which I’ve passed? Sure, I’d love to go back and do it all again, but I’m too old for some of it. I regret being such a fool and not stopping in the moment to rejoice, but then, I could not have known then how much it would mean when I could no longer do that stuff. Waking in a tiny crowded tent filled with stinking sweaty soldiers on a frosty morning atop the wind-blown Umtanum Ridge (Yakima Training Center) to a barely warm meal of low-grade institutional food — at least the coffee was hot — was part of an adventure I’ll never repeat.

Indeed, whatever the US Army was then is long gone and will never come again. Despite how I might long for some small taste of that time, it would be outright evil for me to go back into military service now, even if I could. It would require ignoring a vast forest of moral contradictions bigger than redwoods. Even if I say it was more a desire to be with the people in that setting, I can rest assured the context is now too radically different, and so are the people. This I know first hand by talking to folks still in uniform. The world I knew is long dead, in that sense.

I cannot glorify God on that path.

This is the whole point in bothering to live in the first place. Would I join in some other organized human activity to fulfill the sense of adventure? Sure, but how much of it isn’t mere political theater? Just about every major demonstration or protest suffers major infiltration from government agents. If not up front, it comes eventually until the thing either dissolves in contention or is shut down when some mole figures out the organizational central pillars on which the whole thing rests.

Since I could remember, some part of me has always known that the substance of life is living itself. Not just existing or surviving, but a vivid sense of “am” in God’s Presence. This is the essence of His glory in us. We need not justify anything He calls us to do. Our lives write a narrative of His glory in us.

It was never about the uniform or the flag; those were never symbols of God’s glory. He is already at work destroying the US as an institution. Nations come and go at His whim and none are precious in His sight. The US has been quite short-lived and is now devolving into a farce of hatred and global bullying. It’s never about the results by which humans measure things. Those are all lies, deceptions to keep us from seeing God’s glory as He revealed it.

My life-long sense of adventure has always been a symbol of His purpose in me. It never was a question of accomplishment, but a vivid life exploiting existence itself as the means to bringing Him glory. Seizing a fully conscious occupation of my own body and soul needs no justification, and my epitaph should not depend on a series of titles, awards and other meaningless stuff. Rank and ribbons? Feh. Just tell them, “Oh my, how he lived!”

As noted in my book, Expectations, Hopes and Dreams, the Hebrew language is all about the narrative, a vivid and dramatic recounting that takes you back to that moment. It does so that you may understand what He can and will do to all who seize upon His glory. His glory is that we bring to reality His promises in how we live by His character.

I’m not just riding a bicycle, but pedaling and peddling His glory. I have no idea where I’m going and it doesn’t matter.