ROUGH SEAS AHEAD

(This short story is an assignment I completed recently for the Literary Club, for which we were given a long list of seemingly unrelated words, ie: coterminous, hysteria, drunken, impious, Scooter, etc., to be included in any imaginative tale we could come up with, making sure to include all the words.)

"What a great day to get to know your mother better!", yelled Chumbucket Bob, (known as "Chum" to his friends), over the roar of the outboard motor to Scooter, his ever-flatulent sidekick and fishing-boathand. Scooter didn't reply, but raised his hounddog face slightly and began to pick his nose with his longest finger.

"Ah--you despicable cur! Don't play with me with your boisterous repartee! We'll have to scrape this hull soon. It's beginning to look like your hungover mug!" Chum's hyena laugh bounced off the cold mist that covered the early morning sea of green glass, before a disturbing thought cut it off:

Scooter, that pitiful sot, had foolishly made a drunken and impious suggestion to Sharon the barmaid at the Rusty Cleat Bar last night, something regarding a coterminous sleeping arrangement,. Known to be frugal with conversations, Sharon promptly responded with a fishclub to the top of Scooter's head, sending him off to sideswipe a parked car before driving his rattletrap truck into the bay where it sank like a stone. He swam free and just made it to Chum's boathouse, falling on his mangy bunk and completely crashing an hour before Chum arrived. Now, the only vestiges of Scooter's misadventure were his still damp clothes, a slight limp as he tromped about the tackle and rigging, and a certain confused hysteria about the eyes, more so than usual--almost dangerous looking.

'No reason to rile him in this state,' thought Chum. He turned his back, stealthfully removed his handgun from the wheelhouse holster, and slid it into the front pocket of his coveralls.

THE FEROCIOUS FAITHFUL

The adversary and his minions want to believe that Christians are easily defeated, but nothing could be further from the truth. Thousands of years have passed by, and they are no closer to recognizing the delusions they live by and what they are really up against. The ultimate "Day of Reckoning" is quickly approaching, the epiphany of mind and spirit that will reveal all to everyone in an instant, and will be preceded by the couragous acts of defiance by a few faithful that have nothing left to lose.

The powers that be that perpertrate campaigns of persecution against Christians evidently don't realise their vulnerbilities that exist on a personal level. They have been deluded into believing, by the originator of lies, that imagined powers in the spiritual realm will protect them. But these campaigns realistically have to be carried out on a man-to-man basis--that is, some individual or individuals place themselves at risk when their evil deeds are conducted. In the physical realm, where the second component of this spiritual battle is waged, everyone is on the front lines and there are no trenches. Each evil doer, for the time being, is stuck in this carniage of flesh and blood like the rest of us. Their physical lives are as precarious as candle flames by an open window where the slightest gust of wind will snuff them out. In these Last Days, the source of some of these gusts will surprise them.

It has been said that courage is the greatest virtue because it makes all the other virtues possible. Some people who have performed potentially dangerous and heroic deeds have said that courage came easily and automatically when there was nothing left to do but respond in a moment of crisis. Many Christians today, due to circumstances beyond their control, find themselves in this same position of critical decision. The courage possessed comes not from themselves but from the knowledge that when they die, as Born-again Christians, they will be with the Lord in an instant. When it is necessary to right a terrible wrong or prevent some of the workers of iniquity from preying on the innocent, to make some impact even if it involves a terrible risk, it is their duty and destiny?

"As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as a sheep for the slaughter. Nay(!), in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us," (Rom. 8:36-3.

The days of the Roman Empire and Christians being fed like sheep to the lions are gone forever. On Peter, the "Fighting Apostle's" fierce faith, Jesus said He would establish His church, His church being His people. As Christ's return is eminent, the infirm can pray, the incapable can preach, and the hopeless cases can fight--each fulfilling his or her purpose best as their circumstances dictate. It's the rational utilization of our resources in the last days of this war--the final war that we will win, once and for all, for all time. Amen.

J. Wallace