"When I'm weary and overwrought with so many battles left unfought..."

"...I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
 I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars...
I see the slave awakening to the value of her soul
I see the young missionary and the angry spear 
I see his family returning with no trace of fear
I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights
I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor
I see the man with a passion come kicking down that door
I see the man of sorrow and his long troubled road
I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load" 
 (from Sarah Groves' "When the Saints," definitely my victory song. thanks Dams.)

     It's so easy to look at the world and despair over its atrocious state.  It's easy to doubt God's goodness.  It's easy for me to doubt.  But I have to remember, God is on the move.  He is restoring His people, and He calls me not to despair, but to "fill up what is still lacking in Christ's affliction" (Col. 1:24).  Not that Christ's suffering lacks something to complete salvation, but it does lack a messenger, and He has called us to be that messenger!  Is it a task too big for us?  Yes.  Can we save the world? No.  But God's message is far beyond us.  "It [God's Word] shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:10-11).  As Isaiah says earlier in chap. 55, God's vision is far higher than ours.  What looks like inevitable defeat to us, He has planned for ultimate victory.

     The fam and I have been watching The Lord of the Rings over the past few nights- phenomenal movies!  The story resonates so strongly with THE story, the one we are all living.  But I have to say, great as the movies are, the books are still better.  I love the moment when Sam realizes his and Frodo's impossible journey goes beyond their current circumstances.  He catches the vision of a greater perspective.

"We shouldn’t be here at all if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end."
     When I stay focused in the story, I'm overwrought, but God is outside the story, and He promises me the story's worth fighting for.  It's just so hard for me to remember.  One of the worst aspects of my personality is the way I totter between apathy and ambition, rarely do I balance in between.  In ambition I strive to be and do and think in my own strength, and I burn out (like that quote from Ever After- "I used to think if I cared about anything, I'd have to care about everything, and I'd go stock-raving mad!") then I flip to the opposite end and decide not to care at all- what can I do about it anyway?  Nothing in my own strength.  My Lord remembers that I am dust and gives me His strength to accomplish His purposes.  I'm preaching to myself because, though I know this is true, I don't live like I know it.
     I want to change.  to fight the long defeat.  I want to say, as Paul Farmer said, “I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing.  I don’t dislike victory... we’re used to being on a victory team.  We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.”  There are suffering people in to world without a glimmer of hope.  I want to fight ferociously for those people.
     I'm realizing, we can't fight the long defeat (with hints of future glory) until we catch the vision, until we truly know what we are fighting for WILL come, and will be of far surpassing worth.  This may be a silly example, but bear with me.  Yesterday morning Dad and I were talking about scuba diving.  We got so excited that we actually started dream planning a dive/fishing trip to Roatan, Honduras.  (We're both slightly obsessed with the ocean).

As we looked at pictures of stunning reefs, read about sea creatures and ship wrecks, and talked about diving shear wall drops into 10,000 ft deep blue brilliance, I realized that, as much as I longed for these things (and let me tell you, I want them bad!) they are only a reflection of the glories of Heaven, of eternity with Jesus.  He is all surpassing worth, worth fighting for, living for, dying for, even "losing" for.
    
     Please pray for me, that I would fight, and remember how worthy of fighting for He is.