I woke in the midst of a scene–a garbled mix of people crowded together, their faces unfamiliar, blurred out in the chaos. The setting felt like a pic of old New York around the 1920’s.

Words come into front-view of the scene, almost like an old-fashioned Wall Street ticker tape, stopping on two in old typewriter font:   CIVIL WAR.

I wake. Startled. Alert. Afraid we are about to enter another Civil War, I begin searching the internet for details of a war we are only physically long removed. The casualties at the time were enormous.

The war still produces a ripple effect all these years later; casualties of a war between freedom and oppression.

As with dreams I’ve been given, the meaning is almost always of a spiritual nature, and not necessarily a physical one.

“What does it mean Lord?” The question rambles for days, when awareness seems to surface without thought, so simple I wonder if I’m missing something more significant.

We are in a civil war. 

Civility has taken backseat to the pain of the moment.

In fierce protection, we battle for our sides on the political lines of conservative, or liberal.

On the mask front, we attempt to fight whether an invisible virus is legit, minimizing casualties by providing proof of corrupt documentation of death. Reminds me of Bill’s death certificate. He died after a long battle with cancer, only to fall fate to a heart attack. Was the cause of death cancer, or his heart? Or both? Does it really matter when you watch the one you love, die in your bedroom?

Or the fear behind the mask, incapacitated by the threat of every sneeze being the end of life itself, that we’ve removed ourselves from all forms of livelihood. And are slowly dying in the pain of isolation.

Yes, we are in a civil war. 

Anger and fear and protection (and a garbled amount of other emotions) for what we deem is right, causing us to take sides.

Love taking a backseat, when it should be the driving force of all our actions. 

Love conquers fear.

Love conquers oppression.

Love conquers hate.

Love conquers all.

Yes, it seems so simple. But hardly. Because this war we are fighting is not from without, but within.

And, what we outwardly see is not as it appears either, because our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

It’s not always as black and white, right or left, virus or conspiracy, etc.

It is though about life, and death.

Light in the darkness.

Love overcoming hate.

Lord help us…

“Lord, help. Help me to see others as you seem them. Help me to love in a way that draws others to you, and not toward distress and destruction. Help me be a conduit of You and your love, one that doesn’t compromise truth, but doesn’t feel the need to point errors of another’s way. Help me to see the errors of my own way that is skewed in pain and anger and hopelessness. We need you.”