Sorry For The Delay

But we have had technical difficulties. Firstly, I haven't been riding much because I had gotten right-hooked, and sent my helmet in to get checked, and the company hasn't sent back my replacement helmet. So, no safety equipment means no ride. Bummer. Crapola. This stinks like week-old skunk juice.

Now, to the main reason I haven't written. My wife is due to deliver in the next ten days. We have a little girl we're expecting, and we've been a little scared. Our friends, also expecting in Florida, had their girl early, and their an older couple, like us (mid-30s). Their little girl has blood in some areas of her brain where there should be brain mass - I pray that its only compressed the brain matter, not replaced it, but its still scary for them. The ironic thing is that he's atheist, so no doubt he says this is proof God doesn't exist, or hates Him for letting his precious girl into such a dangerous spot.

God has to let dogs, little kids, and nice old ladies who've never harmed a soul die.

Oddly enough, I think God does speak through various people, whether they realize it or not. The doctrine that suffering is somehow ennobling is displayed in the Ten Steps of Creation that Memnoch espouses in Anne Rice's book Memnoch the Devil. Somehow, the pain and suffering of life drives humanity to achieve its greatest glories, all of which ascribes back to God. While this pessimistically puts God like a Roman emperor, watching the stark drama of life and death in the Coluseum, perhaps there is an element of truth.

In Stephen King's Needful Things, a character struck with painful arthritis was given a charm that ate her pain, but poisoned her soul. She cast it off, and took her pain back, because, as Polly Chalmers said, "The pain makes the love so much prettier, like how a good setting can enhance the beauty of a diamond." I'm not sure that this is exactly what God had in mind, but it does bring me, intellectually, closer to what I see as life as God has for us.

I see God bringing us through the pain and misery to test our faith, to see if we will take that beautiful faith and cling to it, even when it seems that God is playing unfair with us, that we are being dangled out for the bad things in life to take potshots at us. I believe that God has given us the opportunity to shield ourselves with this faith, and He with be there when the shields are all we have between us and the darkness.

A great image came to me when I saw 300 some time ago. Xerxes's herald told King Leonidas that the Persian arrows would fly so thick that they would blot out the sun, and Leonidas said, "Then we will fight in the shade." When the arrows flew, it looks like a plague of insects flying out of the sun, and the Spartan shields went up. Some arrows struck home, others wounded, but the shields of the Spartans held - and the darts were wasted.

Each thing that is cast at us is like a dart. Whether our shield is strong, or not there, we have the opportunity to carry it and be safe in its protection. Whether we carry that shield or not is up to us.

I miss my bike. I'm out of lube, so I can't scrub it down and get rid of the last month's worth of grime and crud I picked up. Feh. I'll get some later and detail my bike out like it needs.

Ride well.

Mago