The Battle

This life is not an easy one to live. Life, itself, is elusive. Life, you see, is not the breath you take or your heartbeat; it is Christ. Life is spiritual. It is love. When we are told that our battle in this life is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers of darkness, we are being shown the difference between the living in Christ and the walking dead.

The problem is we are usually fighting the wrong thing or not fighting the right thing. We tend to think of being a Christian as being in a fight. In reality, it is when we are living as Christ would live that we are at peace. The fight is against the spiritual darkness that can consume us. Ironic though it may seem to those who don't understand reality, fighting often involves resting in the peace of Christ.

It is not possible for one who has received Christ to become one of the walking dead again, but all too often we find ourselves imitating them: following a crowd of zombies, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, living in darkness, fearing the light, and tearing down the living.

We frequently need to stop and ask ourselves, what is it that we are fighting and what should we be fighting? Are we defeating the darkness by resting in the light, or are we destroying the light by fighting in the darkness?

The Weaver

Another scratch as the ink forms my life in an unseen book in an untouched heaven

Untold volumes holding every though, word, and action of every long fated human

Is my life, then, a chapter, or do I hold a special privilege of filling a paperback novel

A fleeting speck in the history of the world left to wander and look up and grovel

I am just a story to be left in the library of an unfeeling author who gave me a heart

All I can do is take the turns as they come on the path he made and watch it fall apart

The strange observer in a story that I cannot step back from because it's all there is

But I do not feel as if I am helpless; I feel that I can move and decide and make a fist

When I stop and think about it I find it hard to see my life as a novel for entertainment

No book could hold the complexities and relationships in one life that is heaven-sent

Looking just beyond the reach of my arm no book could ever describe life on this earth

Unless the books, like sand, can be poured out into each other, none could even hold a birth

I feel I am strung together on a table, intertwined with all of existence in a melody of thread

As I move I cannot see the extent of the ripple I have caused on the time on which I lay my head

I can see now that this living universe could never be held in books or placed on a shelf

I have revealed the world as an unending, marvelous rug where one thread is the sum of myself

And this weaver is one whose hands have traveled the length of every strand at every turn

The product that remains a beautiful creation that stirs love and passion in its glorious pattern

If my life was written in a book, I don't imagine that it would have many pages, but rather that it would be a very big book. Every huge turning point in my life, then, would be like the turning of one of these pages. Then, I suppose, there would be some pages that do not have much written on them at all...and other pages that have to be written in finer print than the others because they go on for so long. Unfortunately, a book would have no way of containing the complexity of life, or even the intricate nature in one of these turns that make life as vibrant as it is.These twists and turns are far too difficult to comprehend a far too beautiful to be written down in a book. Perhaps this life is being weaved, taking each choice I make in rhythm, creating a marvelous artwork fit for the King of the Universe. This, then, is just another turn, in the Artist's guiding fingers.