Eiffel Power

It’s early morning. 12:22am, if it matters.
Forty minutes ago I finished watching “Stranger Than Fiction,” a creative plot with appropriate casting—now my favorite Farrell movie. Watch it. It will make the rest of this page make more sense.
Three nights ago, almost at this very minute, I finally finished reading Wild at Heart, a book about realizing the divine purpose and well spring.
In sixteen hours, these two absorptions will intersect in a very real way in me. I will be confronting a pair of adulterers with the progression of their sin choice into an exponential web of deception, manipulation, and blasphemy. I will be accosting their pastor, who not only rationalizes and condones their relationship but allegedly required it for service in his Corinthian church. I will be the Nathan in front of David, the Baptist in front of the Pharisees.
I will be engaged in spiritual warfare.
This situation has been a situation for more than a year. My wife’s tried every approach to influence the parties toward courage and uprightness. I’ve chipped in where she thought wise. We’ve prayed; we’ve written; we’ve counseled. We’ve sought intercession and intervention. We’ve shown them God’s own words, even if soiled by our own. Rumors and lies, anger and acid have swirled projectiles and gritty clouds around the truth. At 4:30 this afternoon, for the first time since this all began, all involved parties will be assembled in one place for the expressed purpose of drawing the lines, comparing the stories, and defending actions.
I have the floor first. I have been asked to start today’s skirmish. I have one strategy: to quote as much Scripture as applies, to open the conduit as wide as God needs—to speak the truth in love. There is only one truth. It is irrefutable. It’s immutable. And it’s bigger than I am, stronger than I am.
Like Farrell’s Harold Crick, I have lived for the past few months with the premonition that my life is at least somewhat scripted, that I have a choice to embrace destiny or pretend with a sense of control. I have talked to invisible ears, asked questions of “the omniscient third person.”
I flung and leaped in New Zealand to prove courage to those who would hear the exploits—and to myself. Maybe even God, too. I knew that would be the start of abstract leaps in chasms greater than the Nevis Gorge. I invited God to do something big through me, to work through my relationships and opportunities for real and eternal exploits.
In Eldredge’s book, I found direction and revelation. God called me to adventure, to battle, to the fight for beauty—even before “Ryan” and me were matched. My life writes a story, affects a story. It intersects with sovereignty and darkness. I can be a willing pawn, losing myself to be restored as a knight, a bishop, a rook—to show the wisdom of the hand that moves me.
This afternoon stands as no culmination, not even a beginning. Just a step off another ledge. Though I tremble at the responsibility, I run with broadsword in hand over hurdles of guilt and through shadows of intention. Though I want the comfort of my rhetorical skills, I abandon them for Another’s words. This is my 8:17 bus. I must die to self preservation; I must hurl my comfortable perfunctory in the path of invitational danger.
My destiny runs through this test of manhood. So may someone else’s. That’s why I invite Eiffel to finish typing.