And None Shall Look Back
Defend the Past to Preserve the Future
A year later we are still looking at the same pool of water. Great and beautiful has Nineveh been declared, but it lies there with no strength, only holding to its whoredom. It is more like the river Styx, the threshold by which the souls of men cross over into death, rather than an impenetrable fortress. None stand, and none shall look back.
Defend the Past
The horse and the rider may not be found. Indeed, the days may have gone down into shadow. All may have passed like smoke, like wind.
The columns may have melted like wax, and the walls crumbled like leaves. You may question, why bother? And my response is why not? The evil may be great, but greater may be its resurrection. The weeping will tarry tonight, but joy will come tomorrow morning.
Our Nineveh may be threatened on all sides and its flags lay in the dust, but your duty is to take the tattered banners and sew them back together. Its stitches may show and its color may still be faded, but you are to mend it.
The stories may have been forgotten, but you are to remember them, you are to tell them. Amongst the rubble and waste your voice may be the only reverberating sound. But why should that make you sad? If you are the only one whose voice is lifted in song, then be glad that there is someone still singing.
Preserve the Future
The terror of desolation is not that a thing is destroyed, but abandoned. The horror that faces Nineveh is that those who possess love for it will have it grow cold; ardor leaves and apathy moves in.
Ardor breeds ardor. Culture is a thing more caught than taught; you are to show more than you are to tell. If you are the only one holding onto the city, then look at everyone you around as a potential friend. Your company may prove to be the catalyst for their love of these things. Take heart, there are 7,000 men in Israel who have not bowed down to the Baals or served them.
Oaks take time. Do not be concerned with the affairs of pines when you are building something stronger. The speed at which they grow may be enviable, but their strength is not. You are growing oaks, so focus on the purity of their growth. That is how you preserve them for the future. Impure growth leads to wilting.
Lead the future by the hand and one day it will carry your old and broken body upon its shoulders, as you murmur the history of your people, into the next age, as you did for your fathers from the past. The future will carry you forward on the basis of what you did in the present, not what you ruminated on in the past.
Diligence is Faith
And hard is the work that lays before us: the labor and the patience. We will accomplish the work by diligence, the consistent plodding that lasts longer than hardship itself.
The wonderful attribute of the things that we love is that they’re true, beautiful, and good, meaning that they last. These cannot be snuffed out. They are the candle covered by the basket, but it still burns bright despite the effort. The things that we love will be there when it is time to clear the rubble and relay the foundation.
Our diligence in relearning our songs and stories will reward us. In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. The constant chipping away at the marble will always lead to something whether it fails in the moment or succeeds. The feedback after we have chipped the marble into the desired statue will tell us whether or not our sculpting has been correct. If not, then we correct our strokes and become more precise. The dividing line is not whether we succeed or lose in the moment, but rather we either listen to wisdom, and correct course, or continue in folly, and suffer for it.
Diligence and haste are contrasted in this way: one is met with contentment and the other with discontentment. Diligence is content to do the work in the present because it has faith for the outcome in the future. Haste is discontent in the present task because it doubts that the future result will occur, so it works without patience.
In the end, only the forbearing worker survives, and when he does he shall look back upon the city.
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