a battle is under way

I will devote space at the beginning of each week to share thoughts of others who are much more intelligent and insightful than I, with the hope that their words encourage and challenge you as much as they have me. This weeks thoughts are from John Eldredge's Book Waking the Dead:

But there is another, more urgent quality to every true myth. The Second Eternal Truth brought to us comes like a broken message over the radio or an urgent e-mail from a distant country, telling us that some great struggle or quest or battle is well under way. May even be hanging in the balance. When the four children stumble into Narnia, the country and all its lovely creatures are imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch and have been for a hundred years. In another story, Jack and his mother are starving and must sell their only cow. Frodo barely makes it out of the Shire with his life and the ring of power. In the nick of time he learns that Bilbo’s magic ring is the One Ring, that Sauron has discovered its whereabouts, and that the Nine black Riders are already across the boarders searching for the little Hobbit with deadly intent. The future of Middle Earth hangs on a thread.

Darth Vader just about has the universe under his evil fist when a pair of droids fall into the hands of Luke Skywalker. Luke has no idea what is unfolding, what great deeds have been done on his behalf, or what will be required of him in the battle to come. Sitting in a sandstone hut with old Ben Kenobi – he does not know this is the great Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi – Luke discovers the secret message from the princess: “This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

Again this is exactly what scriptures have been trying to wake us up to for years. “Wake up, O sleeper…Be very careful, then, how you live…because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:14-16). Or as the Message has it: “So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!” Christianity isn’t a religion about going to Sunday school, potluck suppers, being nice, holding car washes, sending our second hand clothes off to Mexico- as good as those things might be. This world is at war. Something large and immensely dangerous is unfolding all around us, we are caught up in it, and above all we doubt we have been given a key role to play.

Waking the Dead