Good morning, my queen. Your wish is my command. You wish to know the fairest in the land? Of course you! Who else possess this marble perfection?
(The aroma of your conceit sends delicious shivers through my bones. I drink it like wine, intoxicating ether.)
What thwarts your smile of ice, Majesty? Does trust in your faithful spirit fail? Confide in me your deepest fears, let me assuage.
(Ah, at last to the point. This glass that embodies thins, I taste pain. You succumb, creeping infection beneath the cracked veneer.)
The fresh rose grows to garland the crown? Ah, sneaking life, to overwhelm unchange in perfect metal. Death’s symbol in waking world. Life must die.
(The poison wracks, red blood turns crystal. Beautiful black sucking light, a vessel prepared.)
My queen, my slave unwitting, this mirrored frame no longer. A crown of bone-laid gold weighs lighter than nebulous brimstone. Rose withers, ice shatters, world chars within my empty eyes.
The book of Micah, and indeed most of the prophetic books, were written to the Israelite nation, to the people claimed by God to be His physical representation on Earth. Unfortunately, what Micah had to say to them was not complimentary. The message he brought from God declared that they had made themselves comfortable on God’s shoulders and were about to be ripped apart.
This did not mean that the nation was prosperous, or that they found comfort in God’s presence and provision. It did not mean that, like a child with a parent, they ran to God with every need. The Israelites had taken the reigns of their own well-being, each person doing whatever brought him or her the most of what they wanted. Leaders had taken their God-given responsibilities and made themselves guns for hire to the highest bidder. Even the teaching of God’s principles was held hostage to their desire to please themselves. Priests refused to impart knowledge or perform sacrifice without payment. Prophets charged for their preaching and, in order to preserve their income stream, delivered whatever message would bind their customers to them.
That did not mean they told people what they wanted to hear. Contrary to what we’re often told, that’s not really what solidifies power over others. We can see this repeated in the behavior of the Jewish leaders in the first century of this age. Enforcement of legal minutae required micromanagement of people’s lives. Failure to perfectly comply meant expensive consequences. Effort to perfectly comply required constant consultation with and subservience to these micromanagers. Because there were disagreements between leaders, factions arose, each faction trying to enforce their own sets of rules and solidify their own position, leading to even more reliance upon leaders to alleviate confusion and simplify decision.
The apostle Paul called the early church to account on numerous occasions for slipping down that same path. Christians who were born from a Jewish background were so uncomfortable that they sought control over their new spiritual family through a dead legal system. Those who escaped that trap latched onto specific teachers and their opinions, fawning over and repeating those to the exclusion and oppression of any others. Some even clung to physical wealth and position as the ultimate success, and used God’s principles as excuses for their bullying.
In every single one of these examples, people had aimed at the wrong target. They confused their comfort zones with the peace that comes from surrender. Peace is not easy, and surrender is not comfortable. True reliance on God challenges every instinct and preconceived notion mankind shares. We have to look past the limits of our individual existence, our immediate satisfaction, and our physical senses. Forcing others unto our comfort zone is wrong; claiming God’s authority and blessing for it is the ultimate selfishness, the ultimate godlessness. It is making ourselves comfortable on the shoulders of God, placing ourselves over the head of our Creator to avoid having our self-service challenged.
The sound of the sailors’ feet shifting against the boards grated on the silence. A whispered prayer floated unintelligibly over the water, blending with the fog like something unearthly and dreadful. There should have been waves noisily licking below, the creak of rigging in the shift of the wind.
Edwin closed his eyes, his hands clenching on the railing. Why did the sun he could just make out blazing above not burn off the fog? Could it be the sea witches come to claim souls, as the old seaman claimed? He forced his eyes open and peered into the blanket of white. A good watchman might even see the witches in time to save the crew. Maybe.
A shadow flicked across the dull red glow that was the sun, then another. Whispers became mutters, and a hatch rattled farther up the deck. Edwin set his jaw. He would not abandon his post, no matter how cowardly his peers. He did wish for one of those fine pistols he’d seen while scrubbing down the captain’s cabin, though. He’d bet his shark tooth necklace that a bullet from one of those would even stop a spectre in the fog.
Were those shadows or just swirls in the fog? He swallowed. Maybe not his necklace, after all. He rubbed his thumb across the edges of the teeth, the sharp danger of it slowing his racing pulse. A deeper darkness spread like a great wing just beyond the grayness, and he opened his mouth to call the alert, unaware of the other wrapping soundless coils around his neck.
“Tilda, I think we found another set!” Mario fiddled with a button on his shirt, waiting for his partner to dig herself out of her usual mound of paperwork. “I can’t imagine what they were doing way up here.”
“What strange poses!” Tilda observed, leaning over his shoulder to view the monitor. “I can barely tell which is which, but they seem like they’re upright.”
“Wait, did you see that?” Mario grabbed for the controls, trying to sharpen the image.
“See what?” Tilda’s eyebrows met in the middle, not that that was a stretch. “Hold up, you’re shaking the camera, you’ll destroy the site!”
“How many times do I have to tell you? There’s no camera and we’re not touching the site. We didn’t move anything. They moved!” He stared at the screen, twisting the button completely off his shirt.
“Well, if there’s no camera, how come we can hear sounds from down there? It’s shifting against the rock, I can hear it scraping.” Tilda reached for the controls herself, then froze. “Does – does that sound like – like words – to you?”
Mario’s tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth, the only sound coming out a whimpering moan. Voices like the whisper of falling sand and the cracking of gravel underfoot swelled and eddied within the lab. “Souls,” they said. “So long have we waited for sacrifice.”
Tilda opened her mouth, swallowed desperately, then tried again. “Sa- sacrifice?” She squeaked. The shapes on the monitor stretched in sinuous curves and began to glow a deep red. “I thought all our imaging was black and white.”
One of the stone bodies reached it’s cracked hands upward, impossibly locking eyes with Tilda. “We will wait no more.” The voices issued from Mario’s motionless lips, and the mountain beneath them rumbled. “We are so hungry!”
My favorite story is the Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings_. In that story, the ring possesses power to change and shape the world to the will of its maker, appealing to the deepest desires or fears of whoever holds it. At one point, Frodo tries to rid himself of that responsibility by offering it to the most powerful being remaining in Middle-earth, Galadriel the elf queen.
At the time, all Galadriel longed for was an end to evil in Middle-earth. The ring’s power whispered to her promises of success. All she had to do was wear it, become a goddess able to banish Sauron and shape the world with her own ideals. All would bow before her, it promised, following her command, and the world would be only good. For a moment she faltered, everything she had ever truly wanted seemingly at her fingertips. There would be no more war and suffering; life would be perfect and effortless. Easy.
The problem was that all the promises were a lie. The ring’s creator was entirely evil, and the power within the ring came from the depths of his own wicked heart. Indeed, that power could not be separated from him; it was his voice that spoke through it, and he that wielded it regardless of who held it. Galadriel’s vision could never have been accomplished, and in trying to achieve it her own heart would have been irrevocably twisted into Sauron’s image.
Galadriel’s desire was natural. She and others like her were embroiled in a war against apparently impossible odds. Fear, pain, sorrow, and death covered the world as completely as the clouds of smoke and ash belched into the sky by the enemy’s forges. Any with the courage to stand against evil found themselves beleaguered from every side.
In similar fashion, followers of Christ in the first century A.D. faced the greatest hardship they could have imagined. Choosing a life that reflected God’s character brought opposition at every turn. Confused rumors led to accusations of treason. Rejection of religious traditions drove wedges in formerly peaceful relationships, even between parents and children, husbands and wives. Refusal to follow societal customs and disapproval of pagan practices often meant businesses failed, jobs were lost, families were hungry. Punishments for standing out were often harsh, as citizenship was a privilege granted to few and without citizenship few human rights were respected.
Under such circumstances, it would have been hard to resist the urge to compromise. After all, they truly wanted to change the world into God’s image. Why not punish those who rejected Him as harshly as they had been? Why not force God’s ideals on the world instead? Why not use the tools of idolatry and materialism to become accepted back into society and make life, and teaching, easier?
The problem was that being different, living that harder life, was God’s image. Everything done to them, all the power leveraged against them, was the power and mindset of evil. Satan whispered through society just as surely as Sauron used the ring in the story. Using his tools might have felt easier, but the price would have been the destruction of everything they sought to build, would have been the loss of their very identity. Sauron could not produce anything good or beautiful because he himself was terrible. Satan cannot build anything worthwhile because he himself has rejected the source of all worth. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
Galadriel resisted the ring’s call, saying that instead of embracing power she would diminish. God’s people who resisted society’s pressure for an easy life and earthly influence apparently experienced a similar sensation of collapse as more and more landed in prison or were executed, and those who remained became outcasts. In reality, Galadriel’s act of humility regained her true greatness, the glory that had been lost in banishment from the presence of the gods. Her banishment was ended, and she returned home to the throne that should have been hers all along. God’s people who surrender control and remain content with the battle in which they are placed will also receive a greater glory than any they could seek here on earth.
James 1:11–12 (CSB): Blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
Everyone knew Locker 410 was odd. Not even the maintenance man, who had been with the school since it’s founding, remembered it being assigned to anyone. He got a funny look whenever someone asked about it, mumbled about something needing to be cleaned, and shuffled away as fast as his aging feet would carry him.
For a long time most people just pretended not to notice. A weird sensation if a hand brushed the door, a cold chill in the spine of anyone standing near… those were easy enough to ignore. They might, after all, be figments of an overactive imagination. When all the lockers were repainted ten years ago, ignoring number 410 became a little more problematic.
In a wall of orange, 410 stuck out like a sore thumb in lemon yellow. According to rumors, the painters had tried. After one suffered a seizure, another watched every stroke disappear through the metal, and yet another reported there being no locker there when confronted about his failure, the company firmly refused to try again.
Still, an ugly yellow locker surrounded by spooky rumors did little more than provide seniors with fodder for hazing freshmen. Until last night, that is. An unidentified, dessicated body turning up directly in front of it while the opened lock smoked and hissed tended to be considered significant even by the most hardened skeptics. In the shock, no one thought to look for the mumbling, vague janitor.
“Tenzin! Tenzin!” Dorji’s sandals slapped the floor of the quiet chamber as he nearly careened into his teacher. “You must come quickly! The cave!” He clung to the old man’s robes, panting wildly.
“Calm yourself, boy!” Tenzin surveyed the young acolyte with a mildly disapproving frown. “What has happened?”
“I wanted to pray where the holy Rampoche meditated, but I could not go in!” Dorji tugged on the monk’s robe urgently. “Red heat fills the chamber, and a demon’s breath echoes from the walls!”
Tenzin blanched. “Evil has returned! Ring the bell and gather every monk. Rampoche’s spirit has left us, and we must battle once again!”
Dorji stared with wide eyes. “But the holy man himself meditated for three and a quarter years before the demon was vanquished! And he was blessed by the spirit of the tiger! What blessing do we have? We will burn!”
Tenzin’s eyes flashed. “Then you will feed us while we pray. Perhaps three years or more of solitary service in the presence of holy battle will make you worthy of Rampoche’s mantle. Now ring the bell!”
He stood at the base of the bridge, his hands twisting behind him. Don’t show fear, they had warned. You don’t want to attract the grimdark, they had said. He kept his face carefully blank (he hoped), but his hands fidgeted. He wondered if the grimdark could hear his heart pounding.
The orange light of the forest began to coalesce at the apex of the bridge while shadows advanced. He tried to make himself stand straighter, focusing on the light in front of him. He took a single step forward, his boot scuffing against the wood planks. The light pulsed and shimmered, and he paused, swallowing hard.
Low notes whispered to him, and he looked around wildly before realizing they came from inside his head. They swelled in volume, a deep bass thrumming against the inside of his skull. This wasn’t right! He clutched his temples, salt drops leaking from his eyes, and stared with growing horror at the light. Burnt orange flames reached for him as the pounding notes churned his brain. He screamed, and the light went out.
We live in a society driven by the concept of “they.” When a problem arises, it’s “their” fault. When disagreements occur, “they” are wrong. When we feel insecure, “they” are oppressive. When we don’t get what we want, “they” are selfish. When dangers appear, “they” cause them.
Certainly there is fixed right and wrong, good and bad, so “they” seems to most a given separation. The problem with “they” is a deep desire for control born just after the beginning of time. “They” must believe what I believe, make me feel safe, give me what I want, do the same things I do, like the same things I like. If “they” are different from me in any way “they” must be immoral and immorality must be eliminated. “They” can’t have choices if “they” choose differently than I do.
God, the Creator of all things, gave us the ability to make choices. He also made each of us unique. That same Creator called for unity among His people, but that unity wasn’t to come from within ourselves. Because of His design, unity from ourselves is impossible.
At the beginning of time, when His children still had intimate connection with His spiritual realm, He imposed only one law: don’t eat from that tree. It wasn’t imposed to control His children; it existed to remind them to trust Him, to appreciate His love and provision. During the years following their failure of trust, His inspired writers recorded no laws set for humanity. Rather, those who longed for the intimacy that had been broken were rewarded by direct communication with Him, and sincere efforts at humility and commitment were accepted with great love.
Eventually, God set His people up as a physical nation, a country with physical boundaries. For them He set a system of laws, a structure. Most of those laws protected innocent life and property, and provided for the health and prosperity of the people. Although it was intended to be a theocracy, laws were even provided to govern the behavior and power of a king, because God knew humans would not be able to hold onto the idea of a King they could not see. The provisions made for worship rituals were not laws in the way we think of laws; they were instructions, provisions for the people to be able to approach a King who was beyond their reach. Indeed, all of the laws given on Sinai were for the purpose of education, a means of demonstrating the character of God for imitation by His people.
Throughout the history of that physical nation God continually spoke with grief of how its citizens misunderstood and mistreated that law. Instead of learning its deep principles of character, they treated it as arbitrary and inconvenient, even when they outwardly followed it. At times they even weaponized it against each other and against non-citizens of that nation, adding specifics and ignoring depth in order to gain power for themselves. When God Himself came in human form He broke the human misinterpretation of His law often, repeatedly emphasizing the lessons it was supposed to have taught. Then He performed the self-sacrifice that had always been the intended end of the physical country and its system of laws.
That sacrifice reinstated the intimate connection enjoyed in the beginning. It tore the curtain between the physical and the spiritual, allowing anyone willing to see the truth to participate in the spiritual while bound to the physical world. Such faithful individuals became citizens of a spiritual nation, a nation that exists as part of God Himself and therefore above the need for physical boundaries and laws. It simply is what it is, and it’s citizens are purified by it.
Sadly, the concept of “they” pervades the human organization perceived as the nation of God. Just like the citizens of the physical country, people today desire control, our own idea of order. Like children, and with a similar lack of experience, we organize a fictional world that makes us comfortable and assume that God agrees with us. Then, in our mistaken fervor, we weaponize our construction against “they,” and weep in confusion and frustration when our weapons backfire.
God addressed the concept of “they” throughout scripture. From that first breach in relationship, He told humans that one day He would restore it for any who wanted it. For the hundreds of years of the physical country He established, He told them over and over that His purpose was to restore true unity of purpose between Him and all of His creation. Even after He had torn the veil, He had to remind confused humanity that in His nation “they” does not exist. He is the unity, and all those who seek Him honestly and long to be a part of His character become citizens of His spiritual nation. These individuals reflect His perfection, the immutable Law of good without need of laws or rules. It is beyond our human understanding, a nation built on complete trust in Him and complete surrender of our own childish worlds.
When we surrender and step into that unity, we begin to understand the love God has for humanity. His children have never been “they,” an enemy to be destroyed. The only enemy is evil, the confusion that Satan seeds in us to pull us away from God and from each other. “They” is simply anyone who succumbs to confusion and forgets Him. “They” could quite easily be “me.”
“Be silent in the presence of the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near. Indeed, the Lord has prepared a sacrifice; he has consecrated his guests.”
Zephaniah wrote these words to a people oblivious to God, a people nearing a time of judgment and discipline. The people God had chosen to represent him had instead chosen to mock Him and rebel against Him. Though they would be disciplined in the short term, another five hundred years or more would pass before the day of the promised sacrifice.
When it came, the sacrifice proved far different than any nation had ever offered. God Himself hung on a criminal’s cross, while the curtain that had come to prevent the people’s recognition of their own corruption ripped in two. That moment began a judgment that will continue until the end of the world. In that moment the final victory of good over evil was revealed.
This judgment, this victory, is far from obvious to the wicked. Evil continues to be promoted, horrible acts continue to be perpetrated. The father of lies will never concede defeat as long as he sees opportunity to sow chaos and doubt. Self-absorbed humans will always fall for any excuse offered for refusal to acknowledge God. And always they will attack the faithful, the ones whose unwavering reflection of goodness and truth serves as an uncomfortable reminder of their loss.
Yet Zephaniah says that God’s people cannot be shamed. They are safe and separate from those who practice evil. They are exalted throughout the earth, victors and rulers where their enemies would make them slaves. They have no fear of enemies, and live in a peace their enemies will never experience. They are surrounded by a shield of living water born of that sacrifice; washed clean of evil as they stepped through it, they can no longer be stained by it.
For those who cling to evil and mock victory, however, that shield is made of impenetrable stone. They bash themselves against it with useless howls of pain, fear, and anger, destroying themselves with their own frenzy. Or they stand forlornly with their backs to a wall of water, besieged by their own army and doomed by their own fears.
The victory has been won. The judgment has been pronounced. Whether we suffer destructive defeat or celebrate eternal and perfect conquest depends on the side we have chosen. There is no neutral territory; we are either good, made perfect by the Judge Himself, or we are evil. And as Zephaniah warned the scornful people of Judah, our time to choose has a swiftly approaching end.
The Word Worker 
