mattbraunlin
Member
State-of-the-art Blessings
I am currently writing out the entire Bible by hand. How often the thought has come to my mind as I have done so of ancient scribes, who dedicated their lives to this task.They used crude writing devices which had to be continuously maintained. Paper was expensive and coarse. Their lighting would have been poor. If they had a headache or indigestion, they had no choice but to tough it out and keep writing. Freezing cold in the winter, sweating bullets in the summer. I could go on. Yet these incredible warriors were known to write out the entire massive Bible multiple times, on top of their many, many other duties.
Then I look at myself. I use miraculously effective, reliable and long-lasting mechanical pens, and have all the smooth, lined paper I could ever need. Electric lighting devices allow me to see perfectly at all hours of the night. At the first sign of heartburn I pop a couple of Tums and in seconds I have forgotten it ever happened. I can put on any music or movie I could imagine to set the atmosphere that happens to suit me at the moment.
On a certain level, I know I am unworthy of the great and faithful warriors of the past, who conquered such overwhelming obstacles and hardships in order to spread God's word to others.
But only on a certain level.
Christians who spend all their time guilting themselves (and especially, guilting others) about how easy we have it nowadays have it backwards. They are missing the simple and astounding Truth that God's people are inches away from becoming a truly unstoppable force.
Let's look at it another way.
When Tony Stark puts on his Iron Man suit, he cannot even begin to imagine what life was like for a marine in World War Two. Or a soldier rotting in the trenches of World War One. Or a musketeer fighting for his freedom in the American Revolution or the War of 1812. He is not worthy of the heroes of history, fighting with the simplest weapons, eating maggoty rations, enduring disease and the elements and unanesthetized amputations.
But none of that changes the fact that HE IS FRIGGING IRON MAN. He is armed with weapons which can wreak havoc upon the forces of evil like nothing before him in history. He can travel at astonishing speed to be wherever he needs to be. He can easily endure levels of punishment which would blow his fighting forefathers to smithereens. Tony Stark's Iron Man is a fighting force like nothing the world has ever seen, and all he had to do was put our unbelievable modern sciences, weaponry and luxuries to good use.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, do not waste time developing an inferiority complex over our unprecedented blessings. Such a mindset is unproductive deadweight, and of no use to soldiers like us. Instead, embrace the simple fact that we are superheroes. We are capable of absorbing, utilizing and spreading the Gospel at a level undreamt of in all of human history, and that is not only okay, it is awesome!
Yes, our enemies have modern weapons, too. And yes, they currently have the upper hand. But to me, that sounds like nothing more than the premise for an epic story in which God has called us to be the leads.
Our enemy has many weapons. But we have the cross. We have the armour of God. We have each other, and we have our Great Captain, Jesus Christ, who is readying an army so unthinkably formidable that its light will dim the sun itself.
And the victory party will be with Him in Paradise.
