(~ 5 min read) Good morning. Every morning, as the world began to stir awake, a woman sat on her front porch, nestled comfortably in an old rocking chair. She cherished this quiet routine, savoring the aroma of her steaming cup of coffee. The small farming town she had chosen to live out her days after retiring from teaching in a distant city offered serenity with its majestic mountains and crisp, untainted air. What the woman did not care for was her neighbor.
The woman's neighbor, she believed, was an evil man who hated women. From the moment she had arrived five years ago, an invisible feud had brewed between them. His icy glares and curt remarks had served as constant reminders of their ongoing feud. The man would go out of his way to ignore her, quickly going into his house if he saw her outside.
Behind the man's gruff demeanor and piercing eyes lay a profound loneliness. He had spent countless years living in solitude, haunted by memories of a love lost. With her gentle spirit and striking resemblance to his late wife, the woman's arrival awakened the dormant pain within him. Pride kept the woman from reaching out to solve the feud, so the two people who needed companionship allowed their true enemies to hide in their hearts, loneliness and pride to keep them isolated.
Today's thought: Ephesians 6:12 NIV, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
Closing: It's easy today to find a "side" that agrees with everything we believe. But where does that lead us? And does waging "war" against people, organizations, or things around us change anything? The answer is no. Paul perfectly describes in Ephesians 6 that the physical is not the battleground. It's spiritual. We only enable our enemy, Satan, to steal, kill, and destroy our hopes, dreams, and even lives when we bring human weapons to a spiritual gunfight. The world's problems are rooted in sin. Jesus died, so all who follow and believe in Him may help not isolate the lost world around us.