Blessing of Tortured Men

I was hit by a fist in the middle of reading a novel. Something written there resonated deeply within me, and it stuck to my insides determinedly.

The story told of a person sold to slavery, to carry heavy siege weapons with other slaves in the middle of medieval like battle. The task was a death sentence, where people died quickly, as they were either killed by enemy arrows, crushed beneath the weight of the machine, or died by exhaustion or wounds from the battle.

The slave bands together with the other slaves that repeatedly carried siege machines into war, and they miraculously find hope and a bond to stay alive. They created creeds by which they lived, and swore to uphold the hope of life, and the hope of goodness in the abyss of their environment. They traded despair for hope and in so doing traded survivalism for heroism in the face of certain death. Later in the story they become an elite fighting force in a noble’s army and are all deemed heroes.

This wasn’t when I was struck. It was later when the least of their group, a mute who wasn’t physically capable of fighting, found himself in a situation where all his comrades were either dead or incapacitated. A horrifically evil foe appears, many times his size, and strength, to slaughter innocent people. The mute got up, and despite his body feeling thoroughly rattled by the physical onset of terrible fear, took up a weapon to fight a hopeless battle alone. In the story, he does it, because of the specific oaths of hope he swore in the face of despair. It was at this point that I felt the blow.

I’m not going to list my own sufferings in my quest to find Jesus in different areas of life here. But I know that every time I won a big fight, it came with an oath of hope – something similar to a correctly digested truth in spite of difficulty. When I did this the essence of who I am became altered, and I found within myself unquestioningly correct responses even to some of the most difficult circumstances in those areas those oaths were sworn in.

This process creates certainty of action, regardless of measure of terror. Was it the indefensible mute, or the oath that dwelt in him that stood up to a giant? The oaths of hope and truth exist as part of us when they are sworn in, and despite of, feelings of torture.

The epitome of such transformation occurs when oath making in agony is a way of living and not isolated to events. It requires an absolute to acquire: that Christ is an unshakable hope. It brought a new light to a famous verse, written by one of the most heroic people in the Bible – Paul:

Galatians 2:20:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

If you are a tortured man, please consider that there is an oath you are looking for – some form of truth that will keep you together, to grow your capacity for hope, heroism and goodness. If you need help finding this in your current season, drop a line on the bottom of the homepage.

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