On the internal side, a couple of conflicts were brought home to me this morning after singing a song at church that included a line something like this, “I was a beggar, but now I’m royalty.”
Dennis McKiernan in his forward to Into the Fire says, “Throughout my lifetime various tales I’ve read are about people with special <powers> or abilities , or about people who believe they are ordinary, yet they are really sons or daughters of royalty…and are hidden away in some obscure place….
“These are not tales about common people thrust into uncommon situations and struggling to meet the challenge; instead they are about uncommon people with <powers> and heritages and abilities, and you know darn well they will meet the challenge and crush it.
“This tale is about … two “common” Warrows caught up in events not of their doing. They are not hidden royalty, not mages, not folk with extraordinary abilities, extraordinary powers, extraordinary brains and wit; instead they are mere common soldiers, assuming of course there is such a thing … common people caught up in uncommon events struggling to soldier through.
“Oh, perhaps they do have an extraordinary thing going for them … and that is uncommon heart. …
“Yet is there such a thing as a common soldier?”
His goal is mine. To write about common people in uncommon situations. But with a twist. For the truth of the matter is, ordinary people have the opportunity to be princes and princesses. All of us who follow the King are His sons and daughters, made royalty with the Prince of Peace, seated on His throne beside him. We are each a chosen one. To succeed in the task before us, we need to remember who we are and where we are going, and discover what this actually means for our lives, the conflicts we face, internal and external, and the broader war. Knowing our identity does not just give a character depth, it reaches out to touch us. If we are separated from who we are, we essentially are rootless and purposeless.
Remember who you are. Remember Who your Father is. Remember the One Who chose you before the foundation of the world.
This remembering and the ways it drives our decisions and our fight, leads to deeper and higher discovery of who we are. In that sense, no one is common.
For the world and its conflicts to be fixed, it must be fixed at the level of the heart. The real story is at the heart level, because the heart level creates the details, and forms the moving pieces of the larger story in the wide war. Conflict starts and ends in the heart.
By heart I mean not feelings alone, but our minds where we think through things, our will where we decide on them, and the feelings that spring from good decisions or help drive them. All these make up a true heart in the middle of change.
When we became sons of the royal line, we were destined for a future and a home beyond our greatest dreams. Between us and home is a war. The battles and the fight are fierce. He transforms us, and gives us a new heart, and reminds us. Through the external conflict, by the internal struggle.
May we help others realize who they are, and who they may become. Give them that weapon of knowledge, give them roots and purpose as we fight in the broader war for goodness and holiness and truth.
Remember.
Azalea
Crossover – Find the Eternal, the Adventure
