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I just finished reading an interesting novel by Frank Peretti called The Oath. The jist of it is that people became so controlled by their sins that it manifested itself into a dragon. When they became too far gone, and made excuses about their sins, they were “hooked” through the heart and the dragon killed them. One man found out the best way to kill it was to have Jesus in your heart. So the more he prayed the higher advantage he had, but the more cocky he got, the more hooked he got and closer to death he got.
The book got me thinking about our own sins. How often do we forget about God when we are “engrossed” in our sins. We make excuses for why we do things even though we know it’s a sin. We try to justify things only to have it grow larger and larger until we are “hooked” by it. Maybe we don’t have a visible stain on our hearts, but God sees it. What would happen if our sins manifested themselves into something like a dragon? Would we be able to stop it? To defeat it with trusting in God and asking forgiveness? Or will we need more?
I think too often we think that if we make an excuse then that makes it better or makes it not a sin. Does that really work? What purpose does it do other than make us feel better about something? We try to make one thing into another thing. We think one small thing stays that small but it only snowballs into something bigger and becomes a dragon like Peretti has in his book. What do we do when it snowballs?
Lately I have gotten into the Carpathian novels written by Christine Feehan. Yes they are romance, but focus a lot on the feelings and how the person you love makes you feel as well as the relationship aspect. In her books, Feehan's characters know when they have found their soulmates: "life mate". When they do their bodies just call out to each other, and they would feel lost without each other.
I have to wonder, is that how it is. When you find the one person you are meant to be with that you just know. That your body in other terms, burns for that person. Like I have heard people talk of sexual magnatism, is that how it is? Would you feel lost without that person, would you feel you NEED to be with that person, even if they go out of town. Sometimes in the novels when one lifemate dies, the other soon dies thereafter...could that actually happen? Could someone die for no other reason than that their soulmate died as well (that is after meeting and being married).
I mean people date all the time, sometimes it works other times it doesn't. I am sitting here right now torn between two, possibly three men that I can see myself marrying, the difference is one has that draw, that pull Feehan talks about. My body yearns for him, in all aspects not just a sexual way, could that mean he is meant to be more to me than the other men? How do you know for sure and I know there are a lot of other people wondering the same thing.
One thing I have learned from some romance novels I've read other than how to write a good sex scene was that sometimes love isn't black and white, there is some grey, but other times...its bright as day. In Feehan's novels when the male finds his soulamte, he suddenly sees color and feels emotions. I like to think of it being like that. Sure we see colors and feel emotions, but I like to think that when you find that one person, its like your life just began.
September 21st 2009 23:42
I just finished reading this really good book "The Alchemist" by Paolo Coelho. A dear friend Terry suggested it to me, so I thought why not and started reading it. It talks about wisdom. Somewhat in a spiritual sense but at the same time not really. I know real descriptive right. Anyway like I said i just finished it. There are so many things I could say about it but not enough time and space haha. Anyway at one point the main character goes to an oasis on his journey to find his Personal Legend, to find out what his purpose in life is. Kind of like how we are on a journey to find out what God's will for our lives are. At the end of my copy of the book there are different questions about the novel and about yourself which I am kinda talking about with Terry at the moment.
One of the questions is really interesting and has me really thinking...have there been times in your life when you felt resistant to living out your personal legend? has there been times in your life when you felt resistant to living out God's will? I think at some point in all of our lives we all have been resistant to living out God's will or our Personal Legends as Coelho states. I look back on the things in my life and wonder it all had to be a part of Gods will or leading up to his will or else why would it have happened? Why would I have been diagnosed with cancer? Why did I have to spend 6 months through chemotherapy, lost my hair, lost a part of myself; yet when I was finally told I was cancer free I was a new person. So that I could fulfill my Personal Legend better?
Why was I raped when I was at Bradford School Of Business before coming to RMU? Was that a part of my Personal Legend or rather something or someone trying to interrupt my personal legend? These are all kinds of questions I have asked before well more along the lines of why was I raped...why did I have to be diagnosed with cancer why, why, why to so many other things in my life. Sure some of what I have been through is nothing compared to what other people have gone through but it is still rough still hard, and still changes a person and their perspective on life. I have to think that it all was part of a bigger thing, seeing things through the transparent eyeball as Emerson said. After reading this book I don't think I will resist things too much....maybe I need to read it again later.
There are many different Christian related books out there, but Showdown which is written by Ted Dekker is one that I enjoyed and I think others would like as well. There isn't alot of Christian references in it, in fact you have to look very hard to find somel. The biggest reference is towards the end which I cannot give away or else you may not read the book.
Showdown is a bout a project a professor and some monks are performing in a monastry hidden away in the mountains of Colorado. While this project is going on, all kinds of havoc is being caused in a small town called Paradise. People are killing other, couples are cheating on each other, father beating children, friends jealous of each other and more. The basis of these problems comes down to the mind of a few young children within the monastry.
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I mention that i learned something new from the novel Cross Country. I got this book by accident actually. My mom got it in the mail and didn't want it, so I asked if I could have it since I had just started reading James Patterson. I didn't know what I was in store for when I started to read it. I love James Patterson because he really does make you think about what you are reading and the issues he raises.
In this novel detective Alex Cross chases a serial killer across the Atlantic into Africa, but it's not any African country, but Darfur, Sierra Leone and other places that are facing horrific genocide. Patterson brings about the issue and makes his readers wonder if it is true, I knew it was because of my own research but it ignited a fire inside. Cross learns of women and children being raped and killed in front of their families, Janjaweed men coming into refugee camps and killing and burning people and homes. The people there have no safe haven and have no help from the government.
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I know so many different people don't like to read anymore. Reading has become something that is considered to be boring, a hassle and not imagined as fun and exciting. I love to read. There are so many different books out there that can challenge your mind and make you think about the setting and characters. I like reading a book and then seeing the movie version if there is one and see how they relate.
There is so much you can learn from a novel no matter the genre. After reading James Patterson's Cross Country I got more interested in the Darfur conflict and I learned more simply because I read a little bit about it in a mystery novel. I have formed ideas and theories about Shakespeare because I read many of his sonnets and plays. I have learned more about what it was like for women "back in the day" when women were expected to be a certain way and some "rebelled" against that expectations with the book "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin. There is so much you can learn and think about just from reading a book. And what I plan on doing is showing what books can teach us and give a suggestion for which books would interest others.
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