Unseen powers

I'm an avid reader.

The huge bag I carry with me almost always has at least one book in it. Waiting in long lines, waiting at railroad crossings for a train that has stopped, things like that generally don't bother me. While you're counting the minutes I'm reading.

I'm re-reading a series and just finished book two today, and this particular book was 974 pages, the book before that had a few more than 800 pages. That's nearly 1800 pages. 1800 pages of a constant war between good and evil. I've read the details of vile torture being done to a man to get him to tell the secrets he hid to protect the innocent. I've read of horrible beasts that do horrific things. To see someone die quickly in this book is a relief, it has spared you pages of torment before their death. The evil ones in these books seem to have no limits. The good ones in these books seem to be all too limited.

But despite what the characters believe about how much power they have, they have never failed to be able to accomplish what was necessary. For one character, giving himself over to hate and anger gives him a powerful magic, when that same character gave himself over to love and forgave his enemy, there was nothing that could prevail against him.

These books are almost tiresome in the way that the very second one threat is eliminated another three are waiting to take it's place. The characters, the good ones at least, never seem to rest. And despite the fact that they believe their power isn't nearly enough to stop the threat to the world, they carry on unwaveringly in their mission to try.

Under normal circumstances their magic is exactly what it is, no more or less powerful. But under extreme circumstances, when they know it's do or die, in sheer and blind fear they give everything they have. It is then that they find that their magic is capable of doing things no one imagined or expected, including their enemy. And it is always enough. The most encouraging thing about it is that the power is/was always available to them, they just don't know how to tap into it until they were backed into a corner. And even then it only comes out once the only thing left to them is absolute desperation.

My brother and I both read this same series before, and when I asked him if he noticed a theme to it he said yes, he had, but found the theme to be technology. I've noticed some very well written digs at the welfare system, but that is it. So it could be that others would only read these books and wonder how I could become so gripped by it, when the evil described is absolutely sickening. But I see God on nearly every page. I see things that are impossible, becoming possible because of an unseen hand. I see that while truth always wins, it is immediately followed by another attack from a tireless enemy who simply replaces it's lost minions with new ones.

I see mostly, that just like the characters in this story, the power of God to conquer any foe, or get through any situation is always available to me. I just have to learn to tap into it.