Lost In A Haunted Wood
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a good word on this dark day.
Years ago, I remember a pastor saying that wickedness, if not confronted, only gets more wicked. It was true years ago, and it sure is true today, especially today on Halloween. I don’t know about you, but it seems the world has gone whacko for Halloween and all its ghoulish trappings. It’s a far cry from decades ago when my sisters and I would dress up as cowgirls and go from house-to-house with our bags of candy. Nowadays, it’s just plain dangerous out there, and all the focus on skeletons and skulls only seem to make it more ominous. It just seems to be getting darker and darker.
It reminds me a little of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1 where God looks over an unbelieving world and says, “The eye never has enough of seeing, or the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” No verse better describes the plight of a man without God in his life: bored and itching for something more. People looking for happiness in marriage, money, and mischief, but nothing completes their joy. Our desires and cravings continue to irritate us, making us restless for more. More mischief. More cravings. More rules to break. More darkness to spread. Boredom tends to breed a restless itching for dark things.
I often see this on nights when I wheel into a hotel after a speaking engagement. The bedtime hour has long past, but there is the lounge is still crowded, smoky, noisy and packed with people on a search. What’s even more sad is to pass that lounge the next morning and still see people leaning on the bar and fingering a half empty drink, wondering where the next thrill will come from. Like the song goes, ‘kicks just keep getting harder to find’. It’s a scene not unlike that described from this little poem by W.H. Auden. Listen to this.
“Faces along the bar Cling to their average day. The lights must never go out, The music must always play Lest we know where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the dark Who have never been happy or good.”
It is so strange how people are bent on mad pursuit, making the same mistakes every day, hoping that life will someday reveal an answer, even though the experiences of most have taught them otherwise. Why do people keep seeking and pushing past the boredom? People have to; it’s in their genes to search for something that will fill the void. Now it can either be the darkness in the thrills of something like Halloween, or our seeking can be a stirring of a fundamental need that simply must be satisfied in God. Because every desire, every longing, each one of your aspirations, hungers and thirsts, is no less than a desire for the Lord. People might not know that. They might dress up in a Halloween costume and party until the dawn, but it ain’t gonna satisfy. It won’t fill the hunger. It’ll only kill and destroy the soul.
I’m not sure what you have planned this evening, but I hope you’ll find a few moments to reflect on the gracious goodness of God in rescuing you out of your boredom and away from the darkness. But if, if you are bored or anxious or toying with temptation; if you want to follow your cravings, think about what those cravings really mean, for hopefully they will ultimately show you the truth behind I Corinthians, Chapter 6, that “…God is the answer to our deepest longings.” Wow! It’s something to remember on October 31st, Halloween. God bless you today and thanks for listening to Joni and Friends.
© Joni and Friends
