Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Warrior

Junk that you find during springcleaning...won't win any prizes but doodling certainly helped to pass time during Chinese class...

I'd obviously OD'd on The Hobbit, LOTR, DND, David Eddings, Dragonlance, Lone Wolf and all your usual fantasies and RPGs in primary school. Even my journals were in Elvish and other indeterminate Tolkien languages, mixed with Klingon and OT Greek, using an Egyptian numeral system.

Little could I have realised that later in life, I would be exhorted to put on armour, take up a shield and wield a sword in a very real but different way: I would be encouraged to put on the armour of God so that I could take my stand against the devil's schemes and so that when the day of evil came, I might be able to stand my ground; to wear the belt of truth, buckled around my waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place and with my feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace; to take up the shield of faith, with which I can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one; and to take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:10-17).

Paul's language never fails to stir my old (fantastical) warrior's flesh. Up from the sinful heath of inertia and discouragement I go, restless as Tennyson's Ulysses, confident and eager for the fight. How much I love the word of God. How it pierces the soul. How it speaks directly to the heart. How it can be understood by all people for all time.