For months when I was needing strength, I’d read my bible along with books of strategy, military history and thoughts from old about how wars had been won and lost. Trying to watch movies with historical themes, I sought for tiny grains of truth amongst exaggeration. Although not my forte it seemed important to understand human history repeating these scenarios over and again. We write about them through the ages, we make movies to share both the heroes and the villains. Why, when it seems we don’t learn from any of it?
And that’s when it came to light, some people do learn! Some give themselves up for the greater good of humanity and eternity. Still humanity surrounds them to feed upon their carcasses, to cover over accomplishments with the lies of how they never existed nor mattered. Yet in the darkness of the world these bright lamps have never been snuffed. Their names surface again and again offering the greatest of hope in a world that needs it so much. Their lives given to death have offered us strength to be courageous ourselves; to walk in faith no matter the cost.
John 12:24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
Heb 11:35b-40 But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground. All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.