A Good Soldier

"No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." -II Timothy 2:4 (KJV)

It's kind of a fact of the new mellinium. We live in a war torn world. There are international wars, civil wars, wars of ideals, etc., etc. We are used to constantly hearing about soldiers from any miriad of countries that are doing wonderful things or horriffic things. (Unfortunately the wonderful things are hard to come by, unless you know where to look.) At any rate, they are trying to please thier superior officers with almost everything they do. They are plucked out of normal life and gathered together to put up a front against a common enemy. What does that have to do with us civillians? Well, all of us are called to war. Now, not necessarily in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anything like that. But rather, one that is going on all around us, that we can not always see. We can ignore it altogether if we busy ourselves with all the things that this earth has to offer us. I know what I was made to do. Therefore, at my job, I do my work well. However, I don't seek out extra assignments to take up valuable time. If I want to watch a certain tv show and I have an opportunity to invest in others, I'll tape it and watch it later. I'm trying to take more time to isolate myself for meditative prayer rather than watch tv or listen to music. I still feel far away from the front lines. I feel more centered, and in touch with all that is going on around me, but I still feel like a Private in boot camp. The battle still feels "out there" somewhere. I see the shift toward an areligious, morally relative, society, and see how badly Christians have dropped the ball over the last how many years by trying to enforce rules on people, instead of praying and living out thier ideals. How we've turned people off by shutting out those that are different, instead of loving them and watching them grow. We have become outdated dinosaurs, rather than the people that others look to for help and answers. But all this has to happen for the war to come to it's ultimate conclusion. What kind of soldier are you? Do you feel like me? Are you caught up in the silly, stupid things of this world that don't matter, or are you trying to fix that, or have you already cast off the image of what the world wants you to be for what you were created to be? This war is real, and we need you.