Incurable Wound
I like to read young adult fiction. As literature goes, it's not demanding, and it lets me get my mind off study and explore new directions. Recently, I read through the His Dark Materials trilogy. You may have run across reviews/comments on that series before, and I can confirm, it does present a view of God and the universe that runs completely contrary to Scripture. More on that another time, probably. However, as I read, I was struck by a beautiful theme in the books that's worth reflecting on: the incurable wound. Fig. 1, Two Severed Fingers In the second book, Will, one of the characters, must retrieve the subtle knife. To do so, he must fight for it, and in the course of the fight two of his fingers are cut clean off. In a gut-wrenching and fantastic turn of phrase, the author describes the fingers lying on the floor like a hideous, bloody quotation mark. The former keeper of the knife tells him that this was no accident: every keeper of the knife loses the same two