Bleach

So, my mind has been churning a bit more recently. Usually I take a month-long absence before writing another entry. But I was [San Antonio] spurred on to write about NBA playoff seedings yesterday, especially with Ginobili tearing it up and the Rockets seemingly jumping from 10th in the conference to 7th seed and rising. Good stuff when one of my favorite players is playing ridiculous and one of my favorite teams is looking unstoppable.

After graduating from UC Davis, I have had the chance to watch a couple anime series, Naruto and Bleach. I've made a couple observations about Bleach, but let me first give a brief summary of the series (bear with me).

The series involves shinigami (english translation: death gods) who are in charge of sending the dead souls on earth to a place called "soul society," aka sorta like heaven. Another one of their responsibilities is protecting against humans from evil souls, using a sword as their means of attack against the evil souls. Each shinigami has their own unique sword, with each sword actually representing a spirit with a name. As they get to know the spirit that lives within them, they learn new attacks and grow stronger.

Check this out, this is even better:

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God...and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God..." Ephesians 6:12, 13, 17 (bold and italics mine)

For Christians, we have a sword too, the sword of the Spirit. Right now, even at this moment, there is a spiritual battle taking place. That begs the question, are we strong enough to fight the battle? Well I can confidently say we can, the key being how much we get to know our sword, how much we get our noses into scripture. Joshua 1:8 says this: "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make you way prosperous, and then you will have good success" (bold and italics mine).

So how strong can we get? Well Jesus went toe-to-toe with Satan and deflected off Satan's best stabs, with Jesus using Scripture effectively during His temptation in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11). Furthermore, we should take into account Hebrews 4:12, which says, "For the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of the soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." We need to immerse ourself in Scripture, which will reveal to us any sin or potential sin that can creep into our lives.

For the sake of being an effective witness for Christ to others, lets sharpen our "sword of the Spirit." For the sake of our own relationship with Christ, lets continue to get stronger for God's glory, delving into the riches found in scripture.

(Note: Sometimes my entries are written in a way that is targeting a Christian audience, this entry being one of them)