A mother had often asked her little girl, “What in the world are you doing?” She laughed when she heard her daughter one day asking her doll: “What are you doing in the world?”
These days I think a lot about Elijah and what he was doing in the world. One of his last text messages to me was a reminder of what he was doing in the world: “I am going to change the lives of millions of people and spread the word of God because that’s what God’s plan was all along, and he gave me amazing gifts.”
To Elijah everything seemed to be an exciting challenge. When he was a little boy, he would ask how God would do in battles against a variety of foes. After a while, he realized that every scenario ended up with God as the obvious victor. So he started asking questions about how I would do against various foes.
One morning he asked me in his usual cute voice: “Dad, who would win in a battle between you and all the people in the world?” I smiled and said, “Buddy, there are a lot of people in the world!” Without hesitation he responded: “Yeah, but there are a lot of really WEAK people in the world!” I couldn’t help but laugh.
During his last two months with us, Elijah often read and discussed with me this passage of scripture from Ephesians 6. “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (v10). We knew that without God, changing the world would be a pretty tough battle.
But one of the most important things to do before going into battle is understanding your foe. So if we want to be doing something transformational in the world, we might want to start by memorizing verse 12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.“
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-Ken Buchanan
