Heroes in Hell?

I had a dream the other night. I don't dream often, and I when I do, I don't remember what they were about when I am awake. This dream was so vivid I can remember it in detail even now a few days later. My dream may have slightly been influenced by my watching two of the Lord of the Rings appendices DVDs and by my current family situation...and possibly by a late night chocolate binge.

In my dream I am climbing out of a volcanic, depths of Mordor, hellish place. I am so close to the top, but I keep looking down and seeing the people I love falling and tripping over rocks. I think to myself that they are never going to make it without my help. Some how I am strong enough to climb back down this hellish pit and make it to the first loved one. They won't listen to me! I tell them I've made it to the top, but they won't listen. I desperately go to each loved one and none will listen to me. Heart broken, I climb, crying the whole way, back to the top. I reach it, but look down again and realize I cannot leave them behind, but the urge to get out of there was just as strong.

That was my dream. I have since re-played it in my mind and thought about it these last few nights. I have been wrestling with this dilemma for a long time. I am a product of a culture where no one gets left behind, you man up and be the hero, you save the day. That is good and fine in a military sense, but what about in the spiritual sense? In my dream I am struggling with being the hero or saving myself. This has haunted me and this is why I am up at 1:00 am writing it all out.

A few moments ago, before I got out of bed, I think I heard God's answer. He doesn't need a hero, he wants me. I can't wrap my head around that. For most of my life, but especially this last year I have been trying to save everyone around me... well God asked for his job back. I can't be the hero when the world has already been saved. You would think this would be easy to grasp, and though it does take weight off, I still struggle with wanting to be the hero. Hmm... this is probably why Romans 12:2 is my 'theme' verse lately. I need a transformation by the renewing of my mind. God's ways certainly are not my ways.

ScrewTape on Humility

I have slowly been reading The ScrewTape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I like how short each letter is, so I can read one or two and reflect on them for a while. I don't have a whole lot to say becuase I can't say it any better than Lewis;

To set things up; ScrewTape is the uncle to Wormwood, a demon trying to converting 'patients' from the Enemy (God) over to their Lord. These excerpts are from Letter XIV.

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character... Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be... The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue.

By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools... The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another, The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents-- or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.

He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love--a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.

Hospitals of Hope

check it out: http://www.hospitalsofhope.org/index.htm

Went to their banquet last night...amazing what this small organization is doing on a global level.