Wood Swords and Stone Temples

          It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away wi3’0th sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him (Hebrews 9:23-28) 

          The story within The Game of Thrones and the rest of the Martin series focuses in part on a number of children and teenagers who are caught up in the struggle for dominance of Westeros. One of the things that Mr. Martin does correctly is deal with the weapons training of some of those youngsters. Only one-person (and he was one of the teens) hands any of them a sharpened, steel sword.
          I’m relearning to crochet. The next several projects are going to use a half-double crochet stitch. I’m doing the same stitch over, and over…and over, and I took my project apart at least four times. Similarly, when Tiger Woods was learning to play golf, the stories are that he hit thousands of golf balls to practice his swing.
          Another story is that those training to recognize counterfeit bills spend many hours becoming intimately knowledgeable about every aspect of real American money. When they’re done, the idea is that they’ll know the fake because they know the real.
          The Jews made millions of sacrifices. In the course of a single lifetime, a person might likely have participated in a hundred and fifty or more (if they obeyed the Law.)  With so much practice (if it was good practice, it they were paying attention and doing it right), they should have come to not only know how to do it, but to have considered the meaning and function of the process. They didn’t, but we can’t really blame them. We’ve been told the meaning and function and we often still don’t really get it.
          This is where faith comes in. I suspect I’ll get my half double crochet stitches wrong. I suspect Tiger Woods sometimes wondered if he’d ever master his nine-iron (or whatever.) As we remain faithful to the extent of our skills and knowledge, our skills and knowledge will grow, more slowly than we want, of course, but they will grow. And so, as we wait for Christ’s promised return, and practice our sacrifices (whatever He may call on us to sacrifice) and trust in His better sacrifice, our faith will grow.