Conundrums

I have been studying the battles of the South Pacific in WWII, in order to write my book about my friend, Comer, the war veteran. I even found a picture of a gunner crew in Milne Bay, and I put it on my iPad to bring to Comer. I think it might be him in the photograph. As I have been writing, I have learned much more than I ever knew about the Japanese assault on New Guinea. I even know enough now that I see where some of the historians were incorrect! I had often wondered why Midway and Guadalcanal were such important battles, such inconsequential tiny islands...why would anyone fall on the sword over such tiny places? Now I know.

I had planned to take him and Evelyn out for our weekly drive and lunch, which has been postponed for weeks since she had a very bad fall. But Comer called to cancel, "I just got back from the doctors and I don't feel like I could even stand up, let alone make it to your car."
"What happened?"
"They took out a whole chunk of my cheek," he said, "Skin cancer. I got 15 stitches. I thought they'd never stop scraping and cutting."
Well, that description took care of my need for lunch as well.
"I am so sorry," I told him, "I'll check on you at the end of the week to see if you would be up to it by then."
"I would be able to interview over the phone if you have more questions," he said hopefully.
I had actually finished most of his portion of the interviews for my book, but I paused.
"Are you sure you feel up to it?"
"Oh it would take my mind off the pain," he said.
"Well then...sure, just let me get my notes."
There can always be more questions, I thought, and if it eases the pain.....

One of the most interesting things I have discovered in my extensive interviews for my book is that people are smoldering masses of inconsistencies and conundrums. Even the people you may consider pure have pockets of darkness. I knew that was true of me...but it always surprises me to discover it is true of everyone. We are a mixed bag, we humans, and we like to hope that the face we turn to the world is a pleasant one, but we all harbor murky depths.

Comer's war experiences definitely formed strong opinions of the Japanese at the time. He said they were brutal to their captured soldiers. Reports of mutilation and even canabalism led to many war crimes inquiries and convictions. Yet Comer said once, he had the opportunity to look into the hold of a Prisoner of War ship, filled to the brim with captured Japanese. I asked him how he felt, looking on them in that miserable stinking hold, smashed together and chained.
"I felt sorry for them," he admitted, though his job in the war was to kill them.
I suppose, in a way, that is what God sees when He looks at us. A swarming mass imprisoned in our often brutal and mindless sin. Yet He feels sorrow for us, such overwhelming sorrow that He devised a plan to release us. The plan has a code name: Jesus.

Romans 7:21-25
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.




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