All.

The other day, I was at work, about fourteen hours into the day, and I began to feel anxious and stressed.   I was sitting in front of my normal computer screen under the recessed lighting in the critical care nurses’ station.  Behind, the day nurses talked with the night nurses in a hum of detailed voices.  Overhead, holiday music played, and I heard the tune of, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas.”

I felt the strangling of tormenting thoughts overtaking me, and I looked up and tried to walk myself mentally through the armor of God.  Ever since a friend told me that she mentally dresses in this armor every morning, piece by piece, I have found it a great help.  So now, with a poinsettia in a woven basket on my left, and a plastic model of the human heart in artificial colors on my right, I recited the verses to myself.

I am particularly partial to the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit right now.  I keep thinking about the brain and the heart, and how glad I am to have spiritual armor to protect these two things, since I’m well aware that both my thoughts and my emotions are prone to self-destruction.

But, on this day, the key phrase I heard was “all the fiery darts of the wicked.”  I should add that I’m partial to the word all in Scripture as well.  Whenever the Bible uses this word, I feel astonished.  For instance, my Christmas verse:  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

All? Really?

Apparently.

So, the shield of faith…the shield of believing that God is with us! –has been given to us with the promise that it’s use will quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.  Whether they be confusing thoughts aimed at our head, or faulty emotions aimed at our hearts, they will be quenched–all–by the use of the shield of faith, according to this verse.

As the relief of this thought flooded over me, I thought, maybe I’m making up this verse, and it doesn’t actually say “all”.  So I pulled my phone from my scrub pocket and tapped my Bible app.  I searched the end of Ephesians, and there it was:  all the fiery darts of the devil.

The unqualified promise splashed me in the face.  The thin metal of my phone rested lightly on my fingers and the screen went black as I contemplated this.  What a gift this armor is!  And how true that the Sword of the Spirit itself, the Word of God, has the power to rescue us!

When we were interviewing refugees in Jordan, one lady, a new convert from the Muslims, was telling us that some days she feels that God is farther away than other days.  I was thinking of telling her something shallow, like “We all feel that way sometimes, my friend,” when our fearless leader, a promoter of the Word of God, said something better.

He asked her if she reads her Bible every day, and she said no, she gets distracted sometimes.

And he said:

“I want to encourage you to read because you said that many days you feel weak. I tell you that if you read regularly, you will not need your friend from church or anybody else to rescue you. The Lord will be talking to you through His word. If you have a thirst to be closer to him and to know His will directly, you need to commit to read His word.  Even if you read little each day, you will not feel weak some days, you will feel closer to the Lord.”

Oh.   Yes.

That is what I should have thought of saying.

And when we believe and know that He is with us through the eyes of faith, all the fiery darts of the evil one will be repelled by that shield.