we slaughter our dreams, then claim them as martyrs.
(the following is totally unrelated to the above.)
Having just moved to Omaha, finding a job became of primary concern to me. The obvious place to look for job listings being in the local newspaper, I began a Monday tradition of trekking to a local store, where I would buy Sunday's paper, that being the large edition and therefore the one with the most potential job advertisements. One particular afternoon I walked a couple streets away to a drug store where the previous day's paper could usually be found. Of course, none were left (or else this paragraph would have no need to be written). I proceeded to walk across the street to a gas station, where the attendant directed me to try the grocery store adjacent to the drug store, which as it turns out, hadn't any either. Traveling once again across the street I walked a few blocks to a convenience store, which turned out to have quite the collection of arcade games and billiard and foozball tables, but no Sunday edition. I bought a Coke and continued walking south, where a few blocks farther another convenience store clerk was the next to inform me of the lack of newspapers. I sighed and climbed the crosswalk ladder. Hoping against what seemed to be fate, I entered the gas station as if it were a cave holding my thin, ink-covered Holy Grail, my advertisement-filled Golden Fleece. It did.
The following day found me walking once again, this time driven only in pursuit of exercise and enjoyment of an unseasonably warm November afternoon. A rather good-sized park (for being in the city) is found just a few minutes' walk down my own street, so I decided to head that direction. Along the way, I noticed what seemed to be newspapers inside plastic bags lying here and there. Intent on the park, I left them alone. Returning from my hour as Thoreau (though my Walden was quite obviously man-made and surrounded by sidewalk), I counted the number of strewn bundles. Two dozen, not on porches or in plastic boxes, but orphaned Omaha World-Heralds, strewn amidst the grass and the sidewalk it flanked. A half-dozen of them, all within two feet of each other, lay just before the steps leading up to the courtyard in front of my door. I picked one up and walked inside, realizing some sort of significance was to be found amidst the newspapers. Knowing there was something for me to learn and share, I prayed, asking God for the meaning to be revealed to me.
The newspapers are knowledge. Not just knowlege in general, but the knowledge we are meant to seek, the knowledge that will bring us what we need, the knowlege we are meant to find. At times we'll walk along the streets, inquiring within life's gas stations and convenience stores, becoming frustrated because we know the treasure is somewhere just out of reach. Other times, the knowledge will be abundant and easily within reach, yet there will be so much of it that we must learn to discern which is the true knowledge. As I sat typing this, God made clear in my mind that knowledge is no good without wisdom and so above all else, we must seek wisdom.
I don't think this came out quite as communicative as it was supposed to...but on the other hand, i think it was something supposed to be revealed and meaningful to me...and maybe in a situation for someone else someday. that's all.
jo-el
