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The Art of War | Part I | War Stories

I never liked watching War movies much as a child. I didn't understood the history and politics behind them, and seeing all of that bloody violence left me with a bad feeling. I usually closed my eyes in those scenes.

I knew about war. I knew my daddy fought in one. My mama loves telling the Story about how they met just before he was deployed to Saudi Arabia, and how they fell in love writing Love Letters to each other overseas. She met him at the airport gate when he returned home, and he asked her to marry him right there on the spot.

Or at least, that's how I Remember it. 

Recently, my desk has been strewn with War Stories - Stories that people like Viktor Frankl, C.S. Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, and Sun Tzu once wrote down about their experiences of War. 

And, of course, War Stories that people like Moses, David, Joshua, Solomon and Samuel wrote down are here, too. Their Stories are Stories-within-a-Story of one Big, Beautiful Story, Titled, "The Holy Bible".  

They say this Story is Inspired by God.

Have you ever felt Inspired by God? 

Have you ever looked up at at a Starry, Starry Night to "Consider Your heavens, the work of Your Fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place...(Psalm 8:3) and Found it Beautiful? Did you feel Inspired to Preserve that Beauty you Found in a song or on a canvas?    

Was it the smile on your daughter's face that Inspired you to pull out your camera and take a picture? The one you pull out of your military uniform on the Battlefield to Remember how Beautiful she is, when nothing around you seems very Beautiful? 

Say you stopped long enough to smell the flowers today, and you Found it to have the most Beautiful Aroma. Is the same what Inspired our Ancestors to find a way to extract that essence to Preserve it and Share it? There's a Story in the Holy Bible about a woman named Mary who gifted a very special Aroma to the one she Loved.

Or perhaps you Found something else Beautiful, like a Treasure Chest full of Beautiful Jewels. They were so Beautiful that...

“We do not want merely to see [them], though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the Beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lean in close and I'll tell you a secret: 

I've Seen the Treasure. And he was right when he said it can hardly be put into words. I've been experiencing that recently. I'd like to try, anyway. 

For our Intentions, let's me tell you aStorya bout it. In this Story, you are one of the characters. 

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