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Change the Narrative
We are a paradox from beginning to end. A great riddle to those who observe us. Living in the shadows of a cave. Gorging ourselves on whatever our heart desires. Never realizing that through those appetites a thousand sins are engendered. The struggle is real; not imagined.
“I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
These were the bellows of one Dr. Henry Jekyll. With tears of gratitude and remorse streaming from his face, the veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to toe. This is the great battlefield of mankind.
Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.
With the name changed, the story applies to you.
How close is the analogy. How direct the application.
It's an allegory of man’s dual nature. It’s the idea that respectability is just a veneer beneath which lurks the monstrous. Leaping impulses and secret pleasures that so easily ensnare us become our constant companions. It’s the hour of moral weakness which can ultimately be our demise. Dying to a thousand interests and aspirations by indulging in appetites that we ought never to consider. Becoming despised and friendless by these unbridled passions which drive us further away from the Light. Never comprehending that only His light is meant to convey a sense of hope and healing. It is the quandary Jeremiah sought to comprehend:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17.9
As James so accurately states, our passions are indeed at war within us (James 4.1). They reside within us. Selfish hearts and our desires for pleasure rule over us.
Described as hostility towards God, we in turn are branded as enemies of the Almighty. Becoming confidants of the world as opposed to those who are followers of the Way. Moving in different directions resulting in our eternal destination being one of misery and anguish. The outcome of our conduct is inescapable.
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
James 4.4
And yet repentance is not far from any of us.
If we will but only humble ourselves to Him. Recognizing that our God continues to yearn jealously over us. Desiring all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3.9). Even those who have traversed enemy shores and swearing allegiance to the Tempter. May the acuteness of our remorse begin to die away. Causing us all to bend the knee to the One who can save. And in so doing, our contrition succeeded by a sense of joy. Having our stained robes washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. Forevermore.
The mist having dispersed, let us all flee from the scenes of temptations and excesses that the Adversary places in our path. With willing humility, embrace our new life in Him.
The time is now for us all to change our hearts. Come out of the shadows. Rewrite the narrative.
Before it's everlastingly too late.
