Parable

The Boy Who Asked the Army a Question
A story of a failing camp, a louder giant, and one servant who still saw the cause.
While soldiers stall and a world dreams of other planets, a shepherd asks whether God’s work is still worth the fight.

A valley lay between two hills. On one side stood a giant who mocked the living God. On the other side stood an army whose hearts were failing. They had armor. They had a king. They had lost the reason they were there.

A younger brother came down with bread. He heard the taunt. He looked at the frozen line of men and asked what no one wanted asked: “Is there not a cause?”

His own family flared at him. Pride, they said. Wickedness. You only came to watch. He turned from that anger and asked the question again, until word reached the king. Then he said the sentence the camp had forgotten how to say: “Let no man’s heart fail… thy servant will go.”

In another age a man organized his whole life around a towering aim. He woke knowing what the day was for. Factories, setbacks, hard numbers—all bent toward one vision: that people might live on another world. It was lofty. It demanded focus, grit, and the willingness to be misunderstood.

Higher still was another calling. A man was stopped on a road by the risen Christ and told why he had been seized: to be a minister and a witness, to open eyes, to turn people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. From that hour he measured miles, chains, and letters by that charge. His prize was not a planet. It was to know Christ, to be found in Him, and to recover souls for the glory of God.

The first vision would move bodies across the sky.
The second would move souls from the dominion of darkness and teach a man to walk with God as His friend.

In the valley the giant still defied. The names had changed—fear, compromise, distraction, spiritual sleep—but the mockery was the same. Most waited for a safer hour. A few remembered that time is lost not only by doing nothing, but by doing something other than the assigned work, even if that something looks good.

The wise did not wait for the valley to become easy. They girded their minds. They gathered loose affections. They walked awake. They knew they were not spare parts. From friendship with God the work flowed: eyes opened, hearts turned, ordinary days given eternal weight.

The misunderstood still hear the old accusation. The question has not aged.

Is there not a cause?