It is a battle

After this weeks awesome run, a few of us were able to philosophize together (of course that means Noonan was there).  We covered a lot of different topics:
   - Being sick of books telling us what we already know, it's pretty simple actually
   - Our struggle with denying God every day of our lives.  Do we actually love him?
   - Struggle with the people writing books who are pastors or 20 yrs. old and single.  What about examples for busy laymen with families?
   - Griswold had a Yellow Dart with some matching trailer thing . . .

Anyway, I read the below this AM, and in some way (Noonan must be rubbing off on me) it seemed to
apply to all the deep topics that were brought up above . . . . Enjoy:

Until we come to terms with war as the context of our days, we will not understand life. We will misinterpret 90 percent of what is happening around us and to us. It will be very hard to believe that God's intentions toward us are life abundant; it will be even harder not to feel that somehow we are just blowing it. Worse, we will begin to accept some really awful things about God. That four-year-old little girl being molested by her daddy- that is "God's will "? That ugly divorce that tore your family apart-God wanted that to happen too? And that plane crash that took the lives of so many-that was ordained by God?

Most people get stuck at some point because God appears to have abandoned them. He is not coming through. Speaking about her life with a mixture of disappointment and cynicism, a young woman recently said to me, "God is rather silent right now." Yes, it's been awful. I don't discount that for a moment. She is unloved; she is unemployed; she is under a lot. But her attitude strikes me as deeply naive, on the level of someone caught in a cross fire who asks, rather shocked and with a sense of betrayal, "God, why won't you make them stop firing at me?" I'm sorry, but that's not where we are right now. It's not where we are in the Story. That day is coming, later, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb and we'll beat swords into plowshares. For now, it's bloody battle.

It sure explains a whole heckuva lot.

You won't understand your life, you won't see clearly what has happened to you or how to live forward from here, unless you see it as battle. A war against your heart.

Waking the Dead - John Eldredge