"Whatever is born of Elohim (God) overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Yah'shua (Jesus) is the Son of Elohim?" (1 John 5:4-5, NKJV).

I believe that some of the most profound truths can be told using the simplest of illustrations. In a world that promotes noise and dazzle, people are apt to miss out on the profundity of life that is resident in the simple and upright. Not only that, but in the simple and upright lies a whole world of beauty that can only ever come about through simple discipline and faith.

In 1963 Norton Juster wrote and illustrated a little book called The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. The story tells the tale a straight line who falls in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself, giving rise to shapes so complex he has to letter his sides and angles to keep his place. The dot realises that she has made a mistake: what she had seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. The line, on the other hand, has much more to offer her. In the end she decides to accompany the line, instead.

In 1965, famed animator Chuck Jones turned The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film narrated by Robert Morley. I'd like to invite you to take a look at it before I continue:

I think you'll agree there is much that could be said about this little movie. To me it tells the story Messiah's courtship of us and of the Christian man who must win the heart of woman. Yah'shua was nothing much to look at, we are told by the prophets, but He possessed eternal life nonetheless, and desires to give it to all those who will trust and obey Him. The newborn in Messiah is like a straight line, not very appealing perhaps to the one who wants 'life' but who, in truth, if he is willing to be disciplined and work hard, can bring forth an amazing array of divine characteristics that makes the 'life' of the world look squalid and sordid... as it indeed is.

The world is like the squiggle, purposeless but showy who presents a façade of 'life' and gets away with it because of the deception of its intense movement. But 'aliveness' and 'movement' are meaningless unless they have divine direction and purpose - anything else is anarchy whose end is the abyss. Do not be deceived by the intense energy of Luciferic fire which appears appealing until it devours you but rather yield to the fire which is the presence of Yahweh, a fire which does not destroy the one who trusts but etches into him something very worthwhile and beautiful indeed.

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