Month: June 2008

An Update from Here at Home

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Yeah, I need to put up a newer picture...Some have asked how things are at home in the aftermath of illness from a couple months ago. Thank you for asking. It’s been a difficult time and we’re by no means done with it.

This situation has led me to consider some changes here at Cerulean Sanctum. I’ve thought about solutions for several months, even before illness struck. I keep coming back to the same answers.

Many readers have written in the past to ask why I don’t put up a tip jar. A few have even e-mailed me to ask how they can support this blog financially. In the past, I’ve rebuffed those offers as I believe there are always people more needy than this blog author. But in light of what’s happened in recent months, I’m rethinking my position on setting up a support page. I’m also exploring other options.

I know that a few readers may feel betrayed by my even entertaining these thoughts. My apologies. If the situation were different, I wouldn’t be posting this. Like I said in my post from yesterday, I think we as a country are in for some tough times ahead. Tough times require tough solutions.

I’m open to hearing what you think about this because this blog exists for you, the reader. If this blog didn’t have readers, there’d be no sense in devoting the time it takes to make Cerulean Sanctum what it is.

I’ve always been thankful to God for this site and for inspiring the content here. My inbox contains numerous emails from people who were blessed by coming here. Though it’s been up for nearly five years, Cerulean Sanctum continues to be one of the more unusual sites on the Web. We talk about many subjects that get little exposure otherwise. I have you to thank for that support and for your commentary.

Let me know what you think. Your opinion matters.

Live from the Battlefield

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Imagine you’re a soldier on Omaha Beach, Normandy, France on June 6, 1944. It’s D-Day.

Eight hours into the fighting, you wiped the brains of your best Army buddy off your sleeve after a shell removed the top half of his head. Your thigh aches and oozes blood from the small fragments of a mortar round. When that happened, you have no clue. It’s all adrenaline all the time. Memento mori lurks around every corner. No time to think, just survive.

The stench of sulfur, sweat, and blood assaults your nose. The wails of the dying and injured never cease their howling. And you just walked past a kid—at least he looked like kid, even in his fatigues—Robert Capa's Omaha Beachwho had half his body torn away by machine gun fire, but there he was, still chattering. At least for now. You don’t come come back from an injury like that. You just don’t.

It’s kill or be killed. And too many of your side fell into the latter.

You regroup when the paratroopers drop in later that evening, and as you gaze out over the carnage, you wonder if your side won. Because nothing here resembles victory. Hell couldn’t look this bad. In the end, perhaps everyone lost.

Here and now…

When tribulation comes, it’ll make D-Day feel like a hangnail.

I say that because we are not ready for tribulation. Most of us wouldn’t last through two days of genuine tribulation. The closest we’ve been to tribulation is at family reunions when grandpa talks about the Depression. Oh, and pass the corn on the cob slathered in butter.

I don’t know if we’re headed into tribulation or not. It sure seems like it. Only God knows.

But here’s what I’m certain of: For Christians alive during that tribulation, it’s going to feel like defeat. I don’t say that blithely. We may look around and see nothing but utter chaos, even within our families.

Consider this passage from Daniel 10. The prophet saw a vision and prayed for an interpretation, but one failed to materialize. Finally, many days later, an angel arrives and speaks:

Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.
—Daniel 10:12-14

This awesome angelic being was thwarted by demonic powers. Only after receiving assistance from an archangel did he manage to break through the line of chthonic assault.

And that was during the good times. Tribulation will see far worse.

For Christians, it will feel as if God has abandoned us because all the benefits we’ve known as believers will be bitterly, and perhaps even successfully, opposed. Life and faith won’t work like they normally do. The foundation won’t feel secure. Madness may strike someone you love. Cruel people might take your children away from you. When the forces of hell fight that last battle, they will not go down without taking out as many of us as they can.

It will look like defeat, folks. It will smell, taste, sound, and feel like it, too.

You’ll hear pollyanna Christians talking about how it will all be better. But it won’t be. And those pollyannas will one by one reject the faith because they built their hope on rainbows and fluffy bunnies instead of the Rock. People you know, even people who pledged allegiance to Christ, will turn on you to save themselves. Your best friend may sell you for a loaf of bread.

Torture. Pestilence. Horror.

Like that soldier on D-Day, you may look out over the day’s savagery and weep, wondering who won. And the answer will be just as elusive.

This is what I’m here to tell you: Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.

Because you’ll be tempted in a million ways to do so. People you love will succumb. People you love may even beg you to give up too.

Don’t do it.

We don’t know what to means to endure here in America 2008. We have no idea. Yet soon enough endurance may be our bread and butter.

He who endures till the end will be saved. We know those words well enough. But have they been burned into our hearts? Remember, the only time when we can truly say that Christ is all we need is when Christ is all we have.

And those days may be upon us very soon.

No Shield Big Enough

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We can't always shelter, can we?Though we serve a big God, no shield is large enough to keep out the world.

Tuesday literally burst with life. We had a day that epitomized gorgeous here (mid-70s, dry, slight breeze, and sunny with cotton candy clouds), so I bagged work. My son and I went geocaching instead. We hunted caches down by the Ohio River in Kentucky, the shoreline scenery adding to the picturesque day.

But before we got to our destination, I had to deal with the radio.

I don’t listen to kid-friendly radio. In other words, my listenership of Christian radio borders on the non-existent. I stopped listening when they refused to play a single one of the artists I listen to on a regular basis. You know, artists who talk about Jesus, sin, and repentance.

Instead, I tend to listen to classical music, which is primarily on Public Radio. Same for my news. And as I flipped to the news station, it just so happened to be discussing gay marriage as we drifted down the highway on that stunning June afternoon.

Where’s the force field when you need it?

My son was largely oblivious because he doesn’t know that gay means anything other than happy. You know, the way I understood it as a kid, too. Sadly, it just doesn’t mean that alone anymore.

My parents didn’t talk to me about “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.” When I was in college in the early 1980s, a few men tried to hit on me. Clueless, I just thought they were overtly friendly in an odd sort of way. I didn’t know that there were men out there having sex with other men. I was in my mid-20s before I finally understood what homosexuality was. Even then, it made no sense to me. How was such a thing even possible?

My son won’t get that same shielding. None of our children will.

So I had to talk about homosexuality with my son. In the end, his reaction was much the same as mine: “I wish we could get the word gay back, Dad. It’s a good word.”

I wish we could get a lot of things back.

When I was a kid, things were different:

  • You could leave your house unlocked.
  • Adults were trustworthy, not potential molesters.
  • People looked out for each other and their neighborhoods.
  • The rules everyone knew actually worked and most people weren’t fighting to change them.
  • A boy might take a gun to school and the principal would admire it, not declare a lockdown.
  • Civic pride meant something.
  • You got the sense that people lived for some aspiration or belief greater than themselves.
  • People didn’t go out of their way to avoid someone in need or in trouble.
  • Social groups that hold our society together saw increases in membership, not precipitous declines.
  • A collective trust existed that each of us knew we were a part of a great nation, the best that had ever been.

All those good things (and more) seem to have vanished. Our children will never personally experience how it was for us to grow up in that environment. Instead, they’ll have to deal with the fallout of the jihad we declared on our own values.

In geocaching, you search for little treasure containers scattered all over the planet. I think that in many ways, our society has gone searching for similar containers, each a box with Pandora’s name carved on the front. And when we find one, we fail to ask whether it should be opened. Instead, we forge ahead, unable to contain our glee over what we might find inside.

There’s nothing I would like more than for “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name” to shut the heck up already. I’d love for us to close a few of those Pandora’s boxes and know that what Pandora could not repair, we could. But I know better.

The second law of thermodynamics applies beyond the laws of physics, doesn’t it?