A night to remember

So, I spent tonight helping at a retirement party for the wardens of ovoca manor, a wonderful place to discover God. It was cold, and me and some friends were directing traffic. I was standing there and was just thinking to myself "Yeah, real important here, just wave your arms in one direction and try not to catch hypothermia, I guess." Then some absolutely wonderful lady said to me "Thanks so much, really great work, I mean, nobody likes to do the dirty jobs, but someone has to!" I just say this, because it really reminded me that God can really speak to us through the people around us and what would seem to be wacky co-incidences. It was really fantastic and I was waggling my arms with a smile throughout the night :) The evening went well, apparently said Wardens have climbed approximately 1.7 million steps in their 27 years working at ovoca. Absolutely crazy! I would imagine adjusting to life will be a little crazy, I mean, living up at Ovoca for 27 years would be kinda crazy to change from. I mean, that's not a job. That's your life. Which makes their sacrifice all the more wonderful that they would just completely integrate their lives in this building and it's work, though I guess they'd have to have loved it, otherwise they probably would have snapped by now! It was a fun night, and good times were had by all. Upon returning home, I recieved news..

Turns out Israel launched a full ground assault on Gaza.

It smacks of the same sort of rude awakening I recieved an early september morning. I mean, really, this day was going to be good. It was a blue, cloudless sky, the sun had warmed the whole earth, just for me. Dad hadn't even left for work yet, and mom was making him bacon for breakfast! She basically never did that. I think I even got a piece! I actually, actually even had the song "Mayberry" stuck in my head. Yes, this was gonna be one awesome day. The phone rang, and guess who? Our Irish relatives! I hadn't seen Aunt Hilary for years and years! "What? No, David's  fine, why? There's what? A what? David, she wants to talk to you." She ran downstairs and turned on the news. It was the beginning of something awful that would end up in a misplaced war, and the loss of thousands of lives, on both sides.

I don't know much about the Israeli-Palistinian conflict, my dad explained some of it to me tonight, but at the end of the day, this is just bad news. Another war. This means that someone's son is going to die. Innocent bystanders are going to die. There will be orphans and widows and loss. Someone very dear is going to be lost. This is a big deal. I know they have been at it for years and years and years, but this sort of thing just drives me crazy. Lots of people are going to die. If Iran, who is backing Israel's opponents, gets involved, this thing is going to escalate fast. I don't know. I just hate how we go to war with each other and people's sons and daughters have be killed, and there have to be orphans, but what I really hate is how I can't love my neighbor like I should. Because at the end of the day, we're all perfectly capable of doing all of this, and worse. The soldier who is willing to maim innocent bystanders in "Collateral Damage" is just Lorcan with darker skin. I was going to say older, but they actually conscript people about my age. And it's all to do with our sinful nature, a choice with an apple, and how I get pissed off at people and ignore my brother  and give out to people and judge people as less than me. And how we're all like this and after this war there's going to be another somewhere else and someone else's son is going to have to die, and someone's child will be hit by shrapnel and will never recover from his injuries. I guess all we can do is for a quick resolution, and for peace.