Reality

My family's been working its way through season one of 24 and tonight, we finally finished it. It's a ridiculously intense show, and countless bodies are strewn across Southern California by its end. One of the central plot points is the legacy of one Victor Drazen, the fictional enforcer of the real-life terrorist Slobodan Milosovich. After the last episode ended, I couldn't help shake a few thoughts, namely, that there are men like Victor Drazen around the world, and like him, they oppress the masses by their might that "makes right." Right now for instance, the Horn of Africa is engulfed in conflict as Somalia and Ethiopia fight against militant Muslims. That is merely one instance of suffering and oppression in this world and I sit here in the warm and relatively roomy house in which my family makes it home. My father, brother Michael, and I will begin our long-yet-brief journey by car back to Louisville on Wednesday, and I think that it is indeed time to return. I've snapped back into a fair amount of lazyness, both spiritual and otherwise.

I need God's grace to finish well here for this season. On Sunday evening, I will get the opportunity to share about my summer in Thailand with my home church, and I hope to challenge them to pursue further obedience in missions, but I can only encourage what I practice. The fictional tales of media are a sweet addiction, but reality is very real, and it is "a world by sin destroyed and dead."

Oh may the Gospel prevail over this present darkness.