sometimes I feel like I stand on the edge of an endlessly extending precipice, a long line of people on either side of me, fading off into the distance. The cold wind from space pushes hard against the chest, freezing the heart. Dark and nameless evil boils down below, waiting to leap past us. A blind and shifting crowd pushes and jostles from behind...a population without number...sometimes clinging, and often delivering blows...trying to flail their way past us...tides of stampeding bodies rise and break against us, over and over. The line trembles in the howling savage wind, and the word is passed up and down the extent of armor-clad servants..."hold the line -- hold the line"... Our King has given us this charge...His strength holds our purpose and firms our position. Some are forced back collapsing, fainting into the crowd...and some give up and surrender, tumbling into the ravenous depths... And replacements, awakened from amongst the milling throng, take their stand along the edge... In a place where there is no time and no motion from the sky... just the endless abyssal plain, and the infinite stretching of the chasm... The angry crowd behind, trying to shove past...the stabbing, clawing hungry ones below, waiting for us to falter... The roars and screams below are counterpoint to the shouts and screams behind... My mind craves respite, but my heart knows better...this goes to the death -- no surrender, and no quarter...What would melt the flesh, and freeze the spirit, is turned back by the tongues of fire above us... Resplendent beings in golden armor stride among us...bringing sips of living water...we stand firmer as the winds whip harder, the crowd pushes mindlessly, and the darkness below makes thrusts and feints... "Hold the line. Hold the line.", echoes from voice to voice...penetrating above the constant cacaphony... This. I was designed and prepared for, from the dawning of eternity, to do. My duty. And my joy. No, no happiness here...that is in a far-off country...not here... Beyond terror and fear, in that battle-mind...one of quiet solid endurance... But my joy, that this space that I stand in, had been prepared for my feet to stand... I hold the line. . _________________ MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI