Both young men must have thought their lives were over. Taken into a country of foreigners where they were sold into slavery, they must have despaired of ever seeing their families and homelands again. They had to adapt to a new culture, learn a new language and suffer the humiliations of slavery. They must have believed God had abandoned them. But God does not abandon his people. These two young men, one who lived hundreds of years before Christ, the other hundreds of years after, would change the course of history. God gave their lives a purpose and meaning that could only have come through the struggles they endured.
Joseph, son of Jacob, father of the Hebrew nation, was responsible for saving not only the people of Egypt from starvation, but his own family, and therefore the Hebrew nation as well. And Patricius, a sixteen-year-old Briton who would become known as Patrick of Ireland, was the first to take the message of Christ to that nation, the very country where he had been enslaved.
There is another man whose life took a turn for the worse. He was in the prime of his life. He had a huge following among common people and those of influence. It looked like he was going to take the nation by storm. But then he took his friends aside one day and told them he was going to die, and very soon. He told them be would suffer indignities and be treated like a criminal. He told them it would look like utter defeat. But God does not abandon His people. That young man’s name was Jesus.
As with the stories of Joseph and Patrick, God had a purpose for the suffering Jesus endured. It was a purpose that would change the history, not just of a nation, but of mankind. The suffering and death of Christ freed us all from slavery, slavery that was meant to separated us forever from our Father. But God’s purpose could not be thwarted. Through the death of Jesus, His will was accomplished. We were reunited with our true family, reinstated in our true country. What looked like defeat was in reality complete victory.
There are times in all our lives when it appears God has abandoned us. We see the horrors of wars and famines raging all over our world. We experience the loss of loved ones to the plagues of cancer and other diseases that seem to be out of control. We cry out at the injustices that happen every day.
But God has not abandoned us. He will bring all things to completion in His time and according to His purposes. Therefore we can stand in good company, with Joseph, Patrick and Jesus, and repeat the words of Paul, “Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him, for that day” (2Timothy 1:12).
John burst through the door of the cabin. His voice rising to a high pitch, he yelled as all eyes turned toward him. “Gord, your house is on fire!” Everyone leaped up and headed for their vehicles. It was almost midnight but the sky was lit by an eerie glow. Gord and Wendy had built their two-story log home only a few months before. It was their dream house, but the building wasn’t what they were thinking about as they sped toward the blaze.
They had left their twelve year old daughter at home, babysitting her three younger sisters. As they pulled into their driveway it was obvious they could go no further. The heat from the flames shooting high into the air, was too intense. They held each other and watched their home burn to the ground, hoping against hope that their children had gotten out. It was a full hour before they knew the fate of their four girls. Wendy later said it was the longest hour in her life.
Their eldest girl, Leslie, had woken to a strange sound. As she came wide awake, she realized it was coming from the chimney of their wood stove. By the time Leslie ran downstairs, the roof was on fire. She woke her sisters, grabbed their winter boots and coats and got them out the door. In -50 degree temperatures, she knew they had to find shelter, so she led the girls to a neighbour’s cabin. When Wendy and Gord were reunited with their children, all the possessions they had lost in the fire were irrelevant. Relief and joy spilled out in thankful tears.
Their girls were alive! Nothing else mattered.
Some 2000 years ago, a group of men and women gathered in a closed room, hiding. Suddenly some women burst into the room, yelling. “He’s gone, His body is not there. He is risen!” Unlike Gord and Wendy, the men and women in that room knew their loved one was dead. They had watched his agony and been there the moment he called out, “It is finished.” No wonder they did not believe what the women told them. Imagine their relief and joy when Jesus suddenly stood among them, dispelling their doubts, telling them not to be afraid. Imagine the tears of thankfulness as they realized that what he had foretold had come true. Though he had been crucified, he had been resurrected. As the truth dawned on the followers of Christ, all the confusion and sorrow was swept away.
Jesus was alive. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing else matters. Jesus is alive, “and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations” (Luke 24:47). “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God, through Him, since he always makes intercession for them. “
That is the joy of the resurrection, the joy that lives in the heart of every person who believes. It filled the hearts of those men and women 2,000 years ago and it will fill your heart today. Say yes to Jesus and experience the joy.
Excerpt from Marcia’s devotional book, Spur of the Moment, available from the author or on Amazon.
I purchased a bunch of yellow flowers yesterday. Those who decide where to put what in grocery stores must have lived in Canada during the winter. The profusion of daffodils placed at the entrance of the store were not only eye-catching, they filled me with longing for spring and a need to relieve that longing. I had a bunch in my cart before I even thought about the price or the marketing strategy.
When I woke up this morning, the buds that were just starting to open had bloomed, their bright yellow faces greeting me cheerily. Then I looked outside and groaned at the swirling snow and howling wind. These daffodils obviously did not come from any garden in Alberta. As I admired them, I thought of a friend of mine. She told me they were her favourite flowers because they are among the first to pop up when spring has arrived. She knows about longing for spring too. She too has lived in cold and desolate places where people are sustained by the warmth of friendships and dreams of sunshine. She too knows about longing for colour and fragrant winds and the smell of the earth. Daffodils are a sign that we will not always have to wait, that the longing will be satisfied with good things. They are a sign of hope, telling us to hang on, spring is coming. When blizzards are blowing, we desperately need that hope.
When the storms of life are blowing we are in desperate need of another kind of hope. When the ordinary cares of daily life swirl around us, we need to know that the goodness of God is enough. We need to believe He will satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. The longing for spring, for beauty and for good things are only shadows of that deeper need, the need for spiritual satisfaction. In Psalm 63, David says – “My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (v.1). Then he declares – “My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you” (v.5).
Nothing can satisfy that deep longing but God Himself. We can try to fill it will all kinds of “good” things, but that will only take the edge off, only satisfy temporarily. In the end, the longing increases. The daffodils on my kitchen table won’t really satisfy my longing for spring. As they die, they will only serve to increase it. The writer of Proverbs says – “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). The longing will continue until our focus is turned to the One who can completely relieve it.
Jesus promises to satisfy that longing. He longs to meet us, to draw us into a relationship that will ease the ache of being apart from Him. Let Jesus satisfy the longing in your heart. Meet with Him today.
I have a problem and I hope someone out there in cyberland can help me with it. You see, I have a morning routine – I wake slowly, so I move slowly, wrap myself in a warm housecoat given to me by my wonderful mother-in-law several years ago, and wander to the kitchen, where I make a cup of coffee and usually a single piece of toast with crunchy peanut butter and jam of some kind. This morning it was homemade by a neighbour – mango and strawberry, also chunky.
I then sit in my favourite chair which faces the front window of our home so I can keep track of the few vehicles that might drive by, as well as the deer that wander the neighbourhood every day. I sip my coffee and munch my toast, then pick up my laptop and check my email. After that I open a Bible app and read a chunk of scripture. It’s a rather big chunk right now, because I’m doing a challenge, put out by Mary DeMuth to read the entire Bible in 90 days.
This is when my problem occurs. His name is Little Duffer (aka Little Stinker, Little Terror, Bad Cat, Cheeky Cat, etc.).
You see Duffer likes to jump up between the laptop and the arm of the chair and crawl up to lie on my chest. That effectively restricts the ability to move my left arm, and view the monitor, which makes it a little awkward to type. I could put up with that, I suppose, but then Duffer wriggles a bit higher and begins to knead with his sharp little claws, while twisting his head around to lick my hand. Not just one lick, mind you, but over and over again until there’s a small river running between my fingers. If I push him down, he immediately comes right back. By then I’m ready to do some writing or editing on my WIP (work in progress), so Duffer’s habit becomes rather annoying.
To this point in time, I have found no way to stop him from doing this. Can anyone help me? Pleeeese! I like the little critter but he’s driving me crazy!
By the way, I am following the advice of Garrison Keillor in writing this post. Mr. Keillor wrote – “Life has its sorrows. Make something beautiful out of it.”
I don’t pretend that this is ‘beautiful’ nor would I class my problem with Duffer as a ‘sorrow’ but I hope it gives you a chuckle as well as a proverbial light bulb idea that works to solve my dilemma.
If not, I may have to resort to putting a wire cage around my chair so I can get some work done!
I’m writing to remind you about the Meet & Greet to kick off the Abundant Rain Writing Pilgrimage.
This is a last minute invitation, because the Meet & Greet is this morning, Saturday, February 3rd at 11:00 am MST (Alberta). There’s a Zoom link below if you’re able to come — no need to rsvp.
During the Meet & Greet, Marcia will talk about why she wrote the Abundant Rain devotional journals for writers, and she’ll lead you in a writing exercise.
We will give out some prizes
A small handmade book (crafted by Marcia)
A physical copy of Abundant Rain, volume 1
PDF of Marcia’s Spur of the Moment devotional book
If you miss the live event, we’ll share a replay.
This event will be plenty of fun on its own, but there’s more! It’s also a kick-off and info session about Marcia’s Abundant Rain Writing Pilgrimage that begins next Saturday (10th).
We have put together some discounted bundles for you. For those who register by end of day on Saturday, February 3rd and purchase one of the bundles, we are offering a free writing assessment. www.siretona.com/abundantrain
Hello everyone and thank you so much for hanging in here with me. It has been a while since I posted, I know, but I hope to do so more regularly from now on. I do wish I could slow the days down a bit. How did it get to be the end of January already??
What’s Up Next?
Well ….I’m really excited to join with others once again for the Abundant Rain Writing Pilgrimage, starting with a meet and greet on Feb. 3rd – that’s this Saturday! We’ll have some special bonuses for you that morning (11:00 a.m. MST) and will outline how the pilgrimage will work. We’ll be using a revamped copy of Volume 1 and will get the link to you as soon as we can. In the meantime, there will be a download of the PDF. Do join us, even if you can’t, or don’t want to, do the whole pilgrimage. Here’s the link to get you started
Feel free to share that link with anyone you think may be interested in joining with other writers of faith as we walk this path together.
Update on My New Fantasy Novel:
For those of you following my progress with Pebble, my next fantasy novel, I have been working on it slowly, and hope to have the first draft ready for Beta readers soon. If you would like to be a beta reader – (all that means is, you read the pdf I send and give any feedback you wish) – let me know and I’ll put you on the list. Please pray that I’ll be consistent in the work and that the Lord will lead as I write.
BTW, the other series I’ve been working on has been popping into my head a lot lately too, so stay tuned for more on that as the days go by.
A Bit of Personal News:
Many of you know that we had a tragic thing happen over the holiday season, with the suicide death of a young man who left his wife and three little ones behind. It hit us hard, since it was in the family, though we did not know him well. Please pray for the young mom, that she would find help and support and above all that she would find the Lord.
Otherwise, our Christmas was great, with my 3 daughters, their husbands and our 2 grandkids all in attendance. Little Sparky was a delight – I think he loved tearing the paper off all the presents more than the presents themselves. 😉 And Thea was thrilled with the big blanket picturing the front cover of my children’s book, Merrigold’s Very Best Home (a lovely gift from my publisher at Seritona Creative Publishing).
The New Year roared in with very cold temps that kept us inside most of the time, except when we had to venture to Calgary for some medical appointments, mostly for my husband. We were very glad to finally have some tests and prodedures scheduled after many months of things falling through the cracks. It really does help when you have a family doctor who gives consistent care. Spence is scheduled to have a hernia repair done on Feb. 6th. Prayer appreciated for the surgery and for the recovery. 🙂
Livy’s Life
Liv seems to be adjusting to life with her new companion, Little Duffer. I’m not so sure about Spence and I!! 🙂 We keep renaming him – Little Terror, Little Stinker, Mr. Pest, Psycho cat, etc. etc. He is most persistent about joining me as I work on my laptop!
(sorry, for some reason it’s not letting me adjust the size of those 2 pix).
February is shaping up to be quite busy but one of my priorities is keeping in The Word more. I’ve taken on the challenge to read through the Bible in 90 days (thank you, Mary DeMuth!) Tomorrow will be day 30 so I’m 1/3rd of the way through! It truly is wonderful to read large chunks of the scripture and get a more ‘big picture’ view. Our God truly is an awesome God!
Thank you all for your interest and support, once again! I love to hear from my readers, so do pop me a note if you have a minute! Or, if you feel so led, use this link to support my writing. thourgh paypal.
Blessings of this Blessed Season to you all! In the midst of all the turmoil in the world, know that God is still on His throne. I’m sure He weeps with us and longs for His return when He will set all things right. But for now we must trust and pray and try to follow His path as best we can, ” to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
Here is one of my favourite Advent poems by Malcolm Guite from his book, Sounding the Seasons. (If you don’t know Malcolm’s poetry I encourage you to look him up).
O Emmanuel By Malcolm Guite
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us O long-sought With-ness for a world without, O secret seed, O hidden spring of light. Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame, O quickened little wick so tightly curled, Be folded with us into time and place, Unfold for us the mystery of grace And make a womb of all this wounded world. O heart of heaven beating in the earth, O tiny hope within our hopelessness Come to be born, to bear us to our birth, To touch a dying world with new-made hands And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
****
And, for your reading pleasure, a Christmas story –
Missing Christmas By Marcia Lee Laycock
Sulking and soaking. For me, the two always go together. I know when I’m not fit to be around people, especially the people I’m mad at, so the bathtub is the best place to be. I run the water as hot as I can stand it and stay there until I feel like I can be civil again. That night, the night before Christmas, I thought I might be there till dawn.
Tim had dropped the bomb when he came home from work two days before we were to go home for the holidays. Somehow he’d managed to mess up making the flight reservations. How could he mess up something so important, so essential to my sanity? Bad enough he’d talked me into coming here, to the end of reason and any sign of civilization, just so he could have a “real northern experience.” Bad enough he didn’t once compliment me on how I’d bravely been enduring the minus fifty-degree temperatures. Bad enough we still had five more months to endure life in this town on the edge of the universe. Now we were stuck here for Christmas.
Even if we drove south till the temperature was warm enough for planes to fly, there weren’t any seats to be had. And what was his excuse? He thought he’d told the travel agent to book it, but he had only asked her to give him the details. When she didn’t hear back from him, she assumed we’d changed our minds but didn’t bother to check. There are too many people in this town who definitely aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree.
And speaking of trees. To try and pacify me, Tim dragged a tree home today. I caught him going out the door, downed from neck to ankle, a toque on his head and wool scarf wrapped about six times around his face. When I asked him where on earth he was going, he said something unintelligible and walked out the door. Three hours later I heard him stomping around on the porch. I poked my head out, the cold hitting me like a slap. All I could see were his eyes. They were laughing. He tugged the scarf down long enough to tell me to wrap up and come out for a minute. Curious, I pulled on my parka and went outside.
He stood there like a little boy who’d just bagged his first bird. Only it was a Christmas tree he held on to. Or rather, it had been a Christmas tree. My mouth fell open and I sputtered through a mouth full of scarf. Tim pulled his away from his mouth and grinned.
“Just call me Charlie Brown,” he said.
The tree was almost bare. Tim described how the needles rained down with every blow of the axe. What else did he expect at fifty below?
Then we tried getting it inside. The few needles left on the branches showered the linoleum in the kitchen until it looked like a forest path. We stood it in a corner and stepped back. Tim glanced at me sideways just as I did the same and we both burst out laughing.
“I’ll go buy an artificial one,” I said. Tim didn’t argue.
I trudged off to the only store in town, but of course they were sold out of Christmas trees, artificial or otherwise. Then I went to the grocery store to buy a turkey. No turkeys left either. No cranberry sauce, no fresh vegetables. They had some Caribou steaks on special. Whoopdeedoo. By the time I got home I wanted to scream, “Baaah Humbug!” That’s when I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to soak away the frustration.
The next morning I wished Tim a halfhearted “Merry Christmas,” then told him his present was waiting for him at my parents’ house, three thousand miles away. The house that would be decorated so beautifully, with a six foot tree. The house that would be filled with the smell of roast turkey and pumpkin pie. The house where all our family would gather to sing carols by the fireplace. My pity party was complete when he told me my present was waiting there too.
I was choking down tears when the phone rang. A cheery voice said, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas.” I handed the phone to Tim. I heard his voice go up a few notches the longer he talked. He kept glancing at me, then finally said. “We’ll be there,” and hung up. When he told me we’d been invited to his boss’s house for dinner, I just turned and walked into the bathroom.
He gave me an hour to soak, then tapped on the door. “They have eggnog,” he said. “And it’s warmed up to minus forty.”
I sniffled a bit, dried off and opened the door. “Okay. Why not?”
We dressed in our Christmas best and arrived at the house just in time to see a dog sled scrape to a stop. Tim’s boss, Jerry, waved us over. “The Yukon version of a sleigh ride,” he said. “Hop in.”
Tim and I crawled under the down blanket and I let him wrap his arms around me as the sled jerked forward. The dogs trotted easily and the sled slid with a sighing ssshhh over the snow-packed ground. Jerry gee-ed and haw-ed and within minutes we were on the river. It seemed like we were floating now, whooshing around ice sculptures heaved up by the force of water and carved by wind. I rested my head on Tim’s chest and watched the reflection of a rising moon glint on nature’s statuary. By the time we got back to the house I was breathless with the thrill of the short ride.
Inside, Jerry’s wife, Sonya, handed me a hot spiced apple cider and, as we joined several others in the living room, I realized I almost had what you could call the Christmas spirit. The smell of roasting turkey helped. Sonya had decorated with impeccable taste, but my heart sank a little when I saw there was no Christmas tree. There was a rather odd shape draped in a sheet in one corner, but everyone seemed to ignore it, so I didn’t ask. I even sang along with the others as someone led the carols accompanied by some light finger-picking on guitar.
The meal was wonderful, the laughter and constant chatter enough to bring the spirit of the season into full bloom. But I was not prepared for what happened when Jerry tapped his glass and told us all to follow him back into the living room.
Sonya was behind me as we went. She leaned forward and whispered. “This is always the best moment.”
I followed the group and stood on tiptoe to see what the big secret was. I couldn’t see anything remarkable. In fact, all I could see, as everyone formed a semi-circle, was that we’d been led to the corner with the strange shape draped in a sheet. I held my breath.
Jerry turned and Sonya excused herself through the crowd to hand him a book.
“This has become a tradition for us ever since we moved north,” Jerry explained. “We gather our friends, feed them, entertain them, and then we read a bit.” He flipped the book open and adjusted his glasses. This is the book of Luke, chapter two, verses one through twenty. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree …”.”
As the story unfolded, I watched the faces around me. Some were intent, some looked bored, but there wasn’t a sound in the room – just the words of an ancient story told with simplicity and grace. It thrilled me to know the story was true. Tim stepped to my side as it came to an end.
Jerry closed the Bible, looked around at everyone and smiled. “Now we unveil the tree.”
Sonya slipped through the crowd again and the lights went out. I heard the soft sound of the sheet falling to the floor. Then the room burst into white light. Before us stood, not a decorated Christmas tree, but a spindly birch. Thin branches reached up toward the ceiling. Each branch sprouted groups of bright green leaves. The leaves glowed with the twinkling of tiny white lights.
I stopped breathing and started crying at the same time. The sight filled my eyes with a color they’d been hungering to see and filled my soul with a light that made me forget about myself. I reached for Tim’s hand.
“We don’t like to cut down an evergreen for the sake of tradition,” Jerry said quietly. “So we grow one.” He waved toward the birch. “It seems to suit the spirit of Christmas, the Spirit that teaches that the birth of Christ was a point of new beginnings.”
Sonya stepped to her husband’s side. “Jesus was an ordinary man, nothing special to look at, the scriptures tell us, like this little birch, but he was also the Son of God and he brought new life and light to a dark world.”
Jerry’s eyes gleamed in the reflection from the tree. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
The words echoed from all the lips in the room, including mine.
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“We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.” Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
I was born into a world at war. No one told me. No one around me seemed to know.
But it didn’t take long for me to understand that it was so, and I joined in with enthusiasm. At times it seemed as though it was all a game. I was at war with my brother, three years my senior, continually. It was a physical war that left bruises on us both. That made my grandmother cry. That bewildered me and made me feel an unwelcome thing – guilt.
I was at war with my sister too, though it was a much different kind. It was not the knock-down, fist in the gut kind of war with her. She, the first born, warred with steely looks and sighs that said I was merely a nuisance, barely worthy of a mention. But under the fake indifference was a seething anger, because she believed I was the cherished one. She, so much my elder, had to be responsible and take consequences while I “got off scot-free” too many times.
The only sibling I did not seem to be at war with was my other brother, the second born. He waged his war on other fields, a war of constant pressure to raise himself to an unattainable standard. I watched and listened and secretly cheered him on.
I was the brunt of another’s war, often, and to my great frustration. His name was Bruce and he lived two doors down on our street. He was the only son of a brutal man who beat him with a belt. Bruce raged against everything and everyone. I was an easy target, being much smaller, and a girl. My brothers didn’t provide any protection, the one being too weak, the other being too old to notice.
So I was left as a lone sentinel, without a weapon, to try and guard the fortress of my well-being. I was knocked down a lot, but occasionally I won, in a manner of speaking, by discovering that if I could draw attention to the damage Bruce caused me, he’d get a beating far worse than any I could give him. His father became my secret, fearsome ally.
I waged war in forts built of cardboard and rock. I waged war in gardens owned by neighbours and on the school grounds in games of chance and learned skill. I was only about seven or eight years old when I learned that the games could be deadly.
Her name was Stephanie. She was very blonde and very blue-eyed and my mother said that was the problem. “It seems to strike the little blonde, blue-eyed angels,” she said when she told me Stephanie was dying. That day I learned a new word in the vocabulary of the war – leukemia. I remember staring at Stephanie on a swing in the playground the day after I learned that children could die. She was laughing as she pumped higher and higher. I remember hearing rumours of her funeral later and ever since I have turned away from empty swings hanging still in a playground.
Three years later the deadly seriousness of the war struck again. My grandmother disappeared.
I knew she had been waging war for a long time. She argued with my mother daily, in bitter words that made no sense but felt like stones being pelted in my direction. I felt the hatred in her for my father and knew the bile she poured out on my brother came from that same place.
I knew she didn’t like most people, especially the “gypsies,” the dark-eyed children who came to ask if I could play. They weren’t gypsies, but Italians, but to my Grandmother, they were ‘other’ and therefore suspect. I remember a day when a boy I secretly liked came with his little sister and asked if they could use our bathroom. My grandmother’s nose wrinkled and her lips clamped tight and she closed the door without answering. I felt that unwelcome guilt again, and could not look into that boy’s dark eyes at school the next day.
But Grandma made good cookies and let me knead the margarine bag until the red button bled, and made peanut butter toast for breakfast, with tea she sipped first to make sure it wasn’t too hot. When I sneaked into her room late at night, she would get out a large tin box full of buttons and let me sew them together or let me leaf through magazines or watch her small television, until I fell asleep. She must have carried me into my own room each night, because I always woke up there.
And she told me stories, sometimes about the war and the bombs that fell in England, the place where she was born, and the way men are. “Like animals,” she said. “Gorillas. You can’t trust a gorilla.” She told me about working, at the age of eleven, as a maid in a big house near Buckingham Palace, how the liquor bottles were marked so the maids couldn’t drink from them and how they all would rush to the balconies and wave their dusters as the King and Queen rode out in their carriage. She said looking at the Queen’s daughter was like looking in a mirror and she always wondered why she was the maid and the other child a princess.
She disappeared in the fall, on a day that smelled of snow. They found her jacket then, but not her body, until the spring. She had jumped into the tail race that flooded the locks for the huge freighters that passed from Lake Huron into Lake Superior. I remembered she had talked about drowning, said it was a pleasant way to die. When the police came with her jacket, I listened from the stairs high above and knew that a battle had been lost. My father identified her body, but I heard him say it was hard to recognize her. She had been in the water for a long time. My mother didn’t cry until the day of the funeral. I was deemed too young to attend it. I wondered what they had done, what they had said, if they felt guilty about being relieved of her. As I did.
That’s when I armed myself with numbness. I learned a war could be silent, a necessity now that the source of conflict was gone from our home. Don’t do anything to cause it to come back again. Keep the peace at all costs, even if you have to lie. Those were the unwritten rules. I became very good at keeping them. Too good. I spoke little. I made friends only if it was to my benefit.
It was many years later when that curse was broken, and my personal war came to an end. Death had been all around me and at last I sought a way out, a way to know the depth of peace that can only come from one source. I at last acknowledged the shape of the hole in the core of my being that groaned to be filled. It was the shape of a man, a God-man whose name is Jesus.
When He came to me, He lifted my head and opened my eyes and the world became beautiful again, shimmering with an innocence I had thought long gone, long defiled. It beamed from the face of an infant. The world shone with colours I had not noticed, rang with songs I did not know I knew. Though the war still raged around me from every quarter, I now stood protected, armed with truth, able to recognize the lies hissing in my ears, able to rebuff them, able to smile and mean it, able to love with a genuine love that flowed through me but was not of my own instigating. And though the mystery of it all is too deep to understand, when I acknowledge my weakness, I am not beaten down, but comforted, because I believe there is One who fights the battles for me.
And He never loses.
My only sorrow now comes from knowing some I love have not yet recognized their need nor looked into His face and said, “yes.” But even in that sorrow I am not left alone.
Yes, the war rages. But now I am armed.
****
This piece was recently the first place winner in the Personal Essay category in InScribe’s Fall Contest
marcialeelaycock.com 