The Cosmic Patriots
It's a great Story! There are no losers or useless among Christ's chosen. None at all! They're all on the walls keeping watch and playing their part. They come in different sizes, shapes, ages, degree of giftedness, particularity of giftedness, social status, physical and mental health—but they all serve!
They're not always "happy" because they're not always able to be "happy" due to their life’s circumstances but it isn't only the happy people that serve His gracious purposes. People in the world might "go down" despite their presence in it, but they won't go down without the chosen being on watch and just by their physical presence offering an alternative to "going down".
The walls they guard are not just the "church" walls. These "chosen in Christ" are not just "church patriots"—they’re "cosmic patriots" (to borrow Chesterton’s phrase). They maintain a presence in the world for the world! Their enemies are not flesh and blood as such. They are enemies of all that is an enemy of flesh and blood and all that insinuates itself into flesh and blood as a parasite and a destroyer of the human family.
These chosen ones have no sense of superiority, they are as sick and beaten-up as the peoples of the world around them. If you cut them they bleed, if you cheat them they feel betrayed, they weep at the graves of their dead ones and groan at a child that has gone astray or a marriage that has fallen apart. They have no personal charisma that the world should admire them but what they have (by God’s good and sustaining grace) is a Story and a place in that Story.
Poor souls might go down but they won’t go down unnoticed or unattended—not on their watch!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.