November 27, 2006:
What is God's message to you?
That He neither wants nor requires martyrs.
He requires soldiers.
Answer me this. Why does Evil always win?
There are exactly two reasons. Just these two and no more.
1. Because most people don't fight.
2. Because the Good people who could fight destroy themselves instead.
What good are you to the world, if you lead that Sid and Nancy life? What help will you be to the street people who so fill you with compassion, if you're dead, or you're incapacitated?
Whose voice is it inside you which prompts those Dostoyevksian gestures, for instance, giving your rent money to street people, trusting that God will provide? So that you live your weeks in fear and dismay, that perhaps God won't provide after all, or perhaps not in a way that prevents your eviction, transforming you into one of the very street people who so preoccupy your generous heart.
Not God's.
That life, those decisions. Those are not the actions of a compassionate person who can't stand suffering. They're the actions of a soldier deserting her post. They weaken the Good army, tipping the balance of forces just that much further toward the victory of the other side.
It's Reveille, soldier. Muster up.