"The real business at hand for Christians is not heaven, but holiness. The issue may be left in the Leader's hands: the duty of the soldiers is to stand where they are placed, and strike as long as they see a foe. Until the trumpet shall sound, calling the weary to rest, our part is to fight. Woe to the deceiver who fraternizes with the enemy, or strikes with half his force a feeble blow! 
The kingdom of heaven is within you; within you, therefore, its battles must be fought and its victories won. Strike, and spare not for their crying. It is not a languid expectation of an easy heaven; it is a battle that is before us today. He is the best soldier in the warfare who hates most his Sovereign’s enemy and his own. Polluting lust is the spark that kindles hell: there is no other way of being saved from that burning than by stamping out the embers of sin that lie hidden in the ashes of your own heart.
"The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." God will subdue the adversary; but he will subdue him under your own feet." Arnot, photo by Elizabeth Bailey.

  

 "So, however, are men made. Creatures who live in confusion; who, once thrown together, can readily fall into that confusion of confusions which quarrel is, simply because their confusions differ from one another; still more because they seem to differ! Man’s words are a poor exponent of their thought; nay their thought itself is a poor exponent of the inward unnamed Mystery, wherefrom both thought and action have birth. No man can explain himself, can get himself explained; men see not one another, but distorted phantasms which they call one another; which they hate and go to battle with: for all battle is well said to be misunderstanding." 

Carlyle, photo by Gde-Fon.com 

  The following quote talks about that moment when an almost mystical clarity comes to us and we see our selves, our life and pursuits in a truer light than ever before. We see our vanities in living color and then we gain a glimpse of God like never before that offers an opportunity, if taken, to change everything, or if not taken, to fall back into mediocrity.

   "There are times, I suppose, to every thoughtful person, when the impression of the littleness in his actual life comes upon him with a startling force. Maybe by a touch of sorrow from the memory of a faded form of old affection, or a poet's strain at which some high enthusiasm vibrates in the heart again, a night upon the mountain or the ocean where a Presence greater than the whole field of worlds is felt in the rush of the waters and the silence of the air, or the sight of some secret sufferer who meekly bears a cross unknown to us and surprises us into the humbling discovery, that we have been dead to the sublimities that lie as a cloud of glory around us and within us. Something deeper than the senses show or the hand can touch gleams upon us everywhere; an expressiveness behind the features of life and nature which we had never seen before; and scenes quite often looked at now seem to look at us, and with the living light of a Divine eye. Something that was eternal we had always supposed that there must be; now we find that there is Some One who is eternal; and the drawing near to him, the penetration to him through his universe, the saying of a true word, the lifting of a clear face, to him, appears to have a meaning we did not suspect. Compared with this meaning, how poor seems all that we had taken to be most real! How empty the contents of our busiest day, too troubled about many things to leave any opening for the one thing needful!

If this arousing of the soul is not faithfully followed up, habit will reassert its power, and contradict the divine call by a positive relapse; and an utter skepticism of everything infinite will ensue, and the mind will look back on its only waking experience as nothing but a brilliant dream.

But, if, by perpetuity in the change, this proves to be a true regenerative hour, the opposite effect will follow. Finite things well be despised and disbelieved; will suffer vengeance for their long tyranny, and be spurned as mere deceptive shows; and the more intense their despotism has been, the more thorough will be the renunciation of their sway. When the scales first fall from the eyes of one who has been living for the moment, that which lies before his astonished view is the eternal depth of God, towards which the currents of a resistless spirit appear to draw him." James Martineau.

  The man pictured here is named Bob, he is a friend of mine. This picture was taken in a courtroom where he and his sister looked on as the trial proceeded against the man who murdered Bob's mother.
It is hard to imagine anything in life much greater in horror than to hear the blood chilling news that he and his sister had to endure. I worked with him at Teen Challenge where he supervised, disciplined, counseled and befriended adult men seeking freedom from addiction. His expertise in working with the men kept me in a constant state of admiration. His ability to control and demand compliance from even the most vicious of men, while loving them and gaining their respect was a gifting that could only come from God. When I read the first few lines of the following quote, I immediately thought of him.

 "David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. 

All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. A struggle often baffled, sorely baffled, at times down into an entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking in truth always that: 'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of questions." Thomas Carlyle.

  This time of year my garden beauty is just bursting into a riot of color and green. The spring growth reminds me of the new eyes we have when we first begin our new walk of faith and new introduction to Christ. I ran across these writings that describe one's impressions of conversion.

Somehow I was changed, like the quote --

"His lips drink water but his heart drinks wine." E.E. Cummings.

  I felt like I looked around with fresh eyes, and saw commonplace things as powerfully as I did for the first time.

It was like I had the perception of an infant or a child; there was a sense of wonder and awe. It was like my eyes adjusted for the light: from blacks and greys to full color. Greens were greener, blues were deeper.

A presence Falls quiet on my soul, stillness appreciated, living without the epic, but finding under the surface an alluring simplicity.  

Every moment a promise, not to be found slipping through my fingers, but grasped, possessed, enjoyed.

The doors of perception swung wide-open calling for investigation, exploration, new horizons, and a quest into the vast unknown; New dawning’s, revelations. New sensations of hope, and a heart quieting peace all permeated with a deep elation and joy. Leaving the shallows for deeper currents. James Martineau.