[Marian of Knighton from BBC Robin Hood, as well as the secondary villian of the show, Sir Guy of Gisbourne]

Marian is, of course, the sweet innocent girl from the legend of Robin Hood. The Marian pictured above, however, lives the double life of “The Night Watchman”, a hero who slips food, supplies and weapons to unarmed and down-trodden peasants by night. I love this character not only because she is as mortal and conflicted as any person you will meet, but because she is a prime example of just how fragile the lines between wanting to do good and actually doing the right thing are. There are a lot of us who mean well, but there still remains before us courses of action that may or may not be ultimately just; it’s up to each of us and our conscience to find the balance.

Marian, in the BBC retelling, plays both ends against the middle until she crashes and burns. But how close was she to being a great success. Her failures are easy to point out. It is always easy to see how someone else went wrong and to learn from their mistakes. But how can we keep from crashing and burning in our own self-assured situation? How do we keep from becoming a victim of circumstance?

Again, I think we must be responsible for our own answer. None of this so-and-so lied to me, the devil tricked me, this prophet/politician/media puppet predicted this so of course I listened– there is no one to blame for our failure but ourselves. We are the ultimately responsible. God created us with the freedom to choose, to have the power over our own destiny, not so that we could make stupid claims about who is to blame for all of our difficulties. We are to be heroes and warriors who make the difficult decisions of life and do our best to prosper and flourish, to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Yes, there are hardships, but if we find our hardships to be too great for us to rise up from under, we have a serious attitude problem. It is not our hardships that are out of place, it’s us.

Let’s not be victims of circumstance. Look around. Find an opportunity to move forward, to bless, to build. Seize the day for it is short.