“A final word: Be strong in the
Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be
able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.” Ephesians 6:10-11
I went to bed early last night,
wearied by the challenges of the last several days. My last thought was to pray
that the Lord would give me something to smile about. He did.
Around three thirty this morning
I awoke with this question. Did knights in shining armor ever get struck by
lightning?
What? Where did that come from?
But boy, I couldn’t help but smile because my imagination exploded.
I envisioned an entire battle where
rumbling, distant clouds sends all the brave and noble knights rushing off the battlefield;
utterly forgetting about the war that brought them there in the first place. Their
squires are scurrying to pick up the metal pieces as the knights toss them away
as fast and as far as they could.
Maybe there are golf players
out there who could relate. (Smile.)
Then there was a lone, cartoonish
knight being struck repeatedly by bolts from the sky. He did a stilted jig
every time they struck like something right out of an old Road Runner cartoon.
All that was missing was him holding a printed, wooden sign, “Ouch!”
I wasn’t awake very long and
fell back asleep, a silly grin on my face, with the hope I wouldn’t forget these thoughts. God
honoured that brief prayer, too. I haven’t.
This passage in Ephesians is right
beside the one about husbands and wives. It’s also where my exploration of God’s
Word began. There was no time for the love passages, neither was I in
the place to receive them. I needed to know how to fight, to survive, to
protect my baby faith in an un-Godly household. It is no coincidence that these
empowering words have book-ended a fifteen year journey, seeing as the last few days have taken me back
to where it all began.
In thinking about it this
morning, the main reason for last night’s smile was because what I imagined was
about grace.
I can be awfully hard on myself
at times especially when lightning, in the form of flashbacks, strikes.
You see, I have always believed
the nightmarish, lightening fast flashbacks still existed because I had not fully forgiven. (That’s me, chucking off my armor.)
But
that’s not it at all! They are manifestations of memories wrapped in intense
emotion. Many have emotional connections, a similar feeling about them, which
is why when one begins, more are bound to follow. Memory works like that.
Have you ever talked about the “good
ole days” with an old time friend? One memory stirs another.
To put it another way, stirred
by one flashback, emotions become a very powerful search engine (albeit one I
wish I could sometimes shut off when it gets going.)
It’s a physical thing. It’s how
the brain works. It’s why we can make connections. It’s the source of
intuition. It’s how God made us. And I am okay with that.
Thank, You, Lord, for being my Squire, my Helper, my Strength and my Peace. (And there is peace at last.) AMEN!
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