Dear Christian,

There is a disease, crawling and boiling beneath the veins of this world. It is a disease unlike those that have rent families and hearts asunder, for it thinks. It wonders. It plots. It considers the path before it, and how best it can make its way through the streets of your town unhindered by any who would be willing to stand in its path. With intentional malice and forethought, this iniquitous disease, fueled forward by the darkest thoughts of the darkest hearts has climbed and clawed its way into every recess of every street in your hometown.

The very gravel that skinned your knee as you sought to keep your first bike balanced, is submerged beneath the viscous tar of this sickness. Every branch, of every tree, that callused your palms as you fought your way skyward, has been now claimed as home, by the arching entrails of this ailment as it hangs and drips from their knotted arms.

Thin blades of verdant green, once pressed underfoot as your children learned to walk, run, stand and fall, have long since faded. Sores of blight, black and bleak, cover the greener grass. The lush lawn you one time laid upon, where the rest of the world faded into eternal peripherals as your young eyes beheld every shape of every cloud overhead, has now dried and died.

The snow, once a beacon of childhood hope, has warmed to a puddle of bile who promises not a day of adventure and memories, but instead a day of disgust and dismay.

And this day, this day of darkness and brine, of shadow and shame that prances about disguised as honor, will thrive and rise suns of black upon every day of your future’s future…so long as you refuse to oppose it.

And oppose it, you can, but it is by no means within yourself. There is no solution, inherent within the thoughts of your thoughts, that can work against the growing dark.  We must look beyond us. Beyond ourselves. We must focus our weary and watery eyes upon something, upon someone, outside of and beyond the fleshly constraints of all that is human, if we ever seek to stand against the rising tides.

When darkness grim bears and grins, and the innocent and aged fall victim; when frothing waves of pain give birth to currents of sorrow and shame; when the black flames of hell pulse and crawl across your heart, seeking whom they may devour…look only to He who has stood under the dark shade of night and stood unmoving against the dying of the light.

Look to Jesus Christ, oh sick one. Look to Him, the Son of God, Son of Man. Look to Christ, the dead and risen Monarch of the World, whose royal robe drapes upon worlds and whose fingers wear galaxies as rings. Look to Christ, God in flesh, whose scepter shall stand forever, and whose crown can ne’er be toppled. Look to Christ, the Uncaused One. Christ, the Eternal; Christ the Transcendent; Christ the Liveborn; Christ the Sovran; Christ the Potentate of Time, creator of the rolling spheres and ineffably sublime; look to Christ the King, the sovereign ruler above all authority and power.

It is in Him alone, my peripatetic readers, whose compass shall never fail. As the wise and royal followed His star two thousand years ago, so can we in ways far more effective. For when we repented and believed upon Him, He stayed not far off, looking over the ramparts of eternity, smiling in ways that would warm our weary hearts. No. Instead, He chose to live within those same hearts, forever entwined within our souls. You need not fear a thousand missteps in your journey forward; you need not cower at the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune that our enemy will volley from beyond us, for we have one within us who has generously and lavishly dealt out death in abundant decadence to all who will ever oppose us.

He has killed your sin, bleeding it dry and reigning over every drop as it obeyed His commands to empty. And again, He did this not from afar, sending words and messengers, no. Through His divine flesh and stained with His divine blood, the pagan’s nails pierced the tree He created, as His Father nailed your sins to the body of His only begotten Son, and punished Him in your place. When He descended into the grave, and Joseph’s stone was rolled in place, your sins stayed where Christ did not.

Victorious over death He arose, the unblemished lamb of God who knew no sin, yet became sin that we might become the righteousness of God. 

And therein lies your path forward, brothers and sisters. The very righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Second person of the Trinity, coequal in divinity with the Father and Spirit, has been given to you. And now, when the unblinking eyes of His holy Father look through the raging rains He has prepared you to walk through, He sees the holiness of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Fret not your past, fear not your future, fall not for the present and the full offering of sin that so easily ensnares, for your calling and election are sure! You are a Saint of the most High God, bought not with gold or silver, but with the blood of Jesus Christ you have been made new! You, bloodbought Saint of God, are a Prince, a Princess, and in royal courts are your prayers heard!

When golden beams of breaking Sun, split clouded silver skies, know deeply my friend, that they will forever fall upon your every step, until your mortal body dies.

Should you find yourself on paths dimly lit, with snares and brambles about you, where your past, your flesh, your enemy and your world all stand before you, imploring you to still…don’t. Ignore their words, ignore their cries, ignore their shouts and screams and anything else that may come against you, no matter how bitter or sweet it may be, that begs of you to turn your face from Christ to gaze deeply upon the sins you hate. 

There is no path forward that He has not seen, and if you wish, as you must, to stand against the growing dark that kills freely upon the lands of your forefathers, then it can be done only through His strength and for His glory.

Stand firm you Sons of God!

Stand strong you Daughters of Christ!

Work against the shadows and shade you Lightbringers!

Dear Christian, join the fight.