“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15)
One of the things Reid and I have fun with is our heritage. At least I think it’s fun. Reid is from a well-established family from Richmond, Virginia. I am a northern girl, whose German family settled here. Well, that presents a problem regarding a war we had back in the 1800’s. It was called the Civil War. When Lee surrendered to Grant. Now, Reid tries to tell me the only reason the north won was because the south got tired of killing Yankees. I know better than that. We northerners won fair and square.
Well, one summer we went to a little town in Pennsylvania called Hepler. Trust me, you don’t want to go there for a family vacation. It consists of one crossroad – no light, only a stop sign. But it did have a little country church outside of town called Hepler’s Church of God. That – we had to explore. Behind the church was a cemetery. It was in that cemetery that Reid made a disturbing discovery. One gravestone after another told us that members of the Hepler descendants fought for the north during the Civil War. That was a tough truth for Reid to swallow. Me – I thought it was pretty funny and still do.
But here’s the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would say. When Lee was being pursued by Grant, Lee told his associate that he could not surrender his country; to which his associate replied, “There is no country, sir. There has been no country for the last two years.” In other words, for all intents and purposes, the Confederacy was non-existent. Lee was fighting a battle that had already been lost. Had he realized that, peace would have come much sooner.
Is it possible that we fight battles, conflicts and problems that are unnecessary? Fights we’re still in because we still think we have something to lose when we really don’t. We forget Jesus Christ has already won every battle for us. We don’t need to fight – only believe our victory has already come in Christ. All our future is in His sovereign hands, and that should be a great comfort to us. We can put down our weak weapons.
How many reading this are fighting battles that our Savior has already won for us. Like General Lee, we fight and strive when it isn’t necessary. We worry and fret over things that don’t even exist – or no longer exist. Our old life is over. Our new life in Christ has begun. Let’s stop fighting battles that are no longer ours, because Jesus Christ has already won the war!
Darlene
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