Monsters of a Different Sort

As a child growing up in the 1950's and 60's, I, like many others, loved monster movies. Back then, they consisted mostly of haunted houses, ghosts, and big reptilian creatures like Godzilla and, of course, King Kong and Frankenstein.

As time went by and movie production moved into the digital age, complete with high-tech graphics, the "monsters" got more and more terrifying and the back stories much gorier. Now, there isn't much of a story at all to most horror movies. They've gotten so bad that I refuse to watch them. Give me Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, or Bela Lugosi, and my own imagination, any day!

As I reached a certain age, however, I began to realize that those movies weren't so scary anymore. Life, as I was finding out, serves up enough real monsters of its own, and they're right in front of me. They are the hardships that we all encounter at some point in our lives, and most of the time, they don't even present themselves in visible form at all. It might be a Stage Four cancer diagnosis or the accidental death of someone we loved...losing a job or watching a home burn down...finding out that a spouse has been unfaithful or one of our children has gotten into some serious trouble...

I remember as a child trying to imagine what it would be like if something bad were to happen to my parents. I just could not fathom it, and the mere thought of it chilled me to the bone. When it finally happened many years later, I was older, but it was as just as frightening as I'd once imagined it, only on a much deeper level.

I also remember always asking my mother to leave the hall light on when she put us to bed. I had an active imagination and would always think that something in the dark would get me in the night. Now, 60 years later, I feel it strongly again, as there really is something out to get me. He is called the Evil One, the Master of Lies, and he will stop at nothing to try to get me to weaken and succumb. Now, though, the light isn’t in the hallway. The light is my faith, and I "turn it on" every day to help me battle, and defeat the Evil One and all those things that terrify me.

Right now, the world is simmering in a cauldron of evil, and monsters of a new sort have come out from the closet and from under the bed and are all around, waiting to pounce. Hatred is manifested daily in the news and even people closer by are showing sides of themselves I never knew existed. These are very very difficult times, and we need God’s hand in our lives more than ever. He is essentially the Light that banishes all the monsters, for none of them have any power over Him. When I’ve had my fill of all the sadness going on around me, all the anger and the rage and the disrespect and the sinfulness, I turn to the Lord and remember my mother’s words...

“You’ll be safe now, and nothing will harm you.”

And nothing ever will as long as God’s light is shining on my darkest nights.