A recent visitor to my site here (who is not a believer) said "you will never reach me with vague poetic ramblings." Yeah, she did pay me a little compliment by saying that I appeared to be "a nice person." Still, she did insult my writing. So I want to ask you, dear reader, what do you think? Do you think that my writing is worthless? Am I wasting my time with this blog? Tell me what you think. Should this poor missionary stop dreaming of being a professional writer? I'm not sure if anyone else here may consider it worthwhile now... anyways, I want to present to you a parable. I wrote recently. It means a lot to me. How I ended up writing it was unusual too. I was inspired to write it immediately after waking up- almost word for word. However, the first time that I had the inspiration to write it, I was very groggy and sleepy and did not immediately write it. I laid in bed for about another twenty or thirty minutes, but when I reached for my journal I couldn't remember a thing! I was crushed... I thought for sure I had the idea of something great. That night, before I went to bed, I prayed, "God, I know I screwed up by not immediately jumping up and writing that idea down. Please forgive me and give me that idea over again when I wake up tonight." And the next night, when I did awaken, I had the idea again. I wrote everything down immediately, with little pause or editing. And that is rare for me, the perfectionist. So I present to you, a parable... ******************************************************************** A knight ventures forth to slay a dragon. As the dragon lives in a cave atop a mountain, the knight straps his sword and his lance to his horse to ride into the nearby forest. That forest, they say, is enchanted.
For seven days and seven nights, he rides in a darkness so thick that he cannot see his hand before his face or his trusty steed. To his surprise, he encounters no enemies. He has no need to touch his sword or lance in the forest. Nevertheless, he realizes that even before he has confronted the dragon, this quest is by far the most challenging one that he has ever encountered.
In the abscence of light, it is the darkness of his own heart that he must battle against. His own fears and his past failures attack him endlessly during his waking hours, and even appear veiled to him in his dreams. With every step forward, he feels like a little more of his courage and strength drains away.
The knight has not yet reached the dragon, so we cannot say if he will succeed or fail at his task. However, as the knight draws near to his destination, two things are clear. The first is that the time spent in preperation to do great things is much more impartant than we can ever know. The second is that the greatest enemy does not come in from outside... the greatest enemy is always within. ******************************************************************** As we prepare to enter the New Year of 2009, I hope that you are thinking of how you can prepare yourself for a good year. What can you do better? What do you need to do differently? How can you help others? "It is easy to imagine that we will get to a place where we are complete and ready, but preparation is not suddenly accomplished, it is a process steadily maintained." -Oswald Chambers Merry Christmas and I hope you have good New Year as well for 2009. | 
