The Monster Within

Recently I read the news on the Doherty shooting. It was horrible. I can't even imagine the pain those families are experiencing. Death has a bitter taste.

The crazy thing is that we can't escape death. No matter how hard we try, what diet we take, how much we meditate, death is a part of life. No way around it, no way over it.

Two people have been on my mind lately that dealed with death. The first is Hudson Taylor. He was my biography for English and this man was strong. He went through so much turmoil... saw so much death. Two of his wives died before God took him home... and even four of his children. I mean... I didn't even go over his friends that were martyrs in China. What did Hudson do about it? He trusted in a faithful God. He obeyed his call. He evangelized all the way into the interior of China. He was courageous.

The other person is Winston Churchill. In fifth grade I memorized his D-Day speech for the speech meet. It was inspiring, courageous. I look at it now and realize when he made that speech. He made it to a group of people who saw death, experienced bombings and witnessed the cruelty of death in WWII. Winston saw death and he said... Let's fight!

Here's one of his quotes I looked up: "Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."

Death is sort of like another topic we've been discussing: sin. It's something we can't escape. Something we can't get around. It's part of us. The question is not if we'll sin... it's when.

I look at it like the multi-headed monster in Hercules. That thing was ridiculous! You chop of one head and another one grows. Just like sin. We step forward only to be thrown back. Sin is our monster we have to battle. It's the monster within our own selves.

That I think is what Churchill was talking about. Maybe we can't find courage in battling off this sin, but we can find courage in picking ourselves up again to fight.... and pick ourselves up again... and again... and again. For we can never stop fighting because sin won't stop coming. It's a battle... but we push through. Continuously cutting sin down head by head by head...

That's courage. It's what we're called to.

Jesus says we are to carry our cross. It's something we have to do daily. Battling sin is part of that. This is what I think though. If we have the courage to pick up the cross... Jesus will give us the strength to carry it.