Ensign: Restoring Shattered Sight

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3

AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS                                                                       5 December 2014

There was an enchanted forest filled with all the classic characters we know.
Or think we know.
One day they found themselves trapped in a place where all their happy endings were stolen.
Our World.
This is how it happened...

Supposedly everyone you have ever seen or read about in fairy tales actually exists in another world. Or, as the television series Once Upon A Time posits, did exist until a curse befell them and transported everybody to our world, into a created-just-for-them community called Storybrooke. Twenty-eight years later, a woman (who's the daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White, get this) comes to Storybrooke and through what she learns and does is able to break the curse, so everybody now remembers who they are (were). And THAT was just Season One!

Restoring the magic and the memories to the inhabitants of Storybrooke has created its own problems and new characters appear all the time. This series hooked my wife and me about mid-first season and our kids got on board with Season Three's excursion to Neverland. It's become a Monday night ritual in our house -- Monday because even though the show's broadcast Sunday we have to watch any television online and haven't paid for a live streaming yet. Overall, I think that's a good thing.

The current story arc in OUAT (our acronym for Once Upon A Time, pronounced "ooh-AHT"; heck, Sarah and Jeffrey know what we're talking about as we say this!) has ... well, one of the current villains, the Snow Queen -- based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name -- releasing a Spell of Shattered Sight that will affect whoever it touches to kill whoever is next to them. All those little hatreds you and I think we don't have, they will come bubbling to the surface.

Yeah, we all have them. Whether we get ticked off because we're behind who seems to be the slowest driver with a license or feel someone else got the promotion we thought we deserved or someone keeps starting and stopping their newspaper delivery a day or two at a time ... wait a minute, that's too close to home for me. All of us have people whose behaviors we hate; we do our best, we pray our hardest, to not ... but I wonder if that's where we miss the mark. Face it, this side of heaven we will always miss the mark. We've all sinned and we all fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

We all far short of the BEST that human beings can be, who God created us to be. Jesus' admonition to His disciples at the Passover meal before He was crucified, the new commandment "That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:34-35) was hardly new. But here's my question; based on how you and I live our lives, would anyone believe that we love them for who they are?

I once read in a novel that the opposite of love is not hate. It is apathy. You have to care about something very strongly before you can hate it. Unfortunately, you and I still live in a world where thanks to our actively (and inactively) committing sin -- acts that separate us from our Creator God -- it's easy to become people who don't love, who don't hate, but who just don't care. Try and take in any standard newsfeed and you get inundated with "support this cause" or "pity the oppressed one", and when your own world, your own family, have their own issues it drives you bananas!

But I thank God. "I thank God upon every remembrance of you" is not only some pithy greeting Paul uses as recorded in Philippians 1:3, but also something we need to remember to do all the time. It's not thanks for their circumstances -- that can get to be envy and covetousness, one of the Bible's big no-no's -- it's thanks for THEM, for each of us has the opportunity to make a difference in others' lives for the better. And it's not a question of how powerful we are or how righteous we are that makes what we do every day good or bad, loving or hateful. It's something we have to choose.

Every day, Lord, I ask restore my shattered sight of that.

David

 
P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager to action too! If you find that I'm not or you want me to get lost, just let me know -- thank you!

Thank You, Lord, that we can come to You in prayer and that You provide for all our needs, even when we don't know what they are. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence there and around the world.

Thank You, Lord, for everyone in leadership and service, both here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have and the promise of new life! I pray that we all seek and have a blessed week. Amen.