He was a stranger in a strange land: lost in the cosmos, a man with neither compass nor guide, sitting in a tomb in Egypt surrounded by the dead, wit… - Stephen R. Lawhead

..none of this surprised me; it was as if this meeting between us was foreordained by a force greater than either of us. I know I had the events wheeling swiftly over a well-traveled course to a destination long ago established. I felt as if I was merely saying the words I had been destined to say. If there was no surprise, neither was there fear or alarm. The circumstance seemed both right and natural — as if we had talked this way a thousand times, and knew well what the other would say... This is the only truth we can know in life. Nothing else in the world is certain — only this: that a man and woman should come together in love.

If I have learned anything in my time among you, it is this: true honor lives not in the skill of weapons or the strength of arms, but in virtue. Skill fades and strength fails; virtue alone remains. Therefore, let us put off all that is false. Let us prefer instead the valor of virtue, and the glory of right.

Little Archie’s story is darker, more desperate, and yet drearily familiar.