The Seen and the Unseen

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I've somewhat been avoiding reading or listening to the reports of the recent events that occurred in Connecticut. I just didn't want to hear about it and give my little bit of added fuel to that fire...however yesterday, I did look around to see what some of  my favorite blogger friends had to say about it, and of course also picked a Phil Johnson sermon to listen to. What Lyn had to say about this topic put it back into the greater context for me, and the Phil Johnson sermon reminded me that this is a spiritual war. Lyn mentions that Obama's little "reaction" is deserving of some kind of Golden Globe (interesting typology) award. I did see a clip of Obama's little comment on the Connecticut incident. The little swipe of the finger of his left hand at an imaginary tear was quite touching (not!). But again, all these things are things I can see on the outside, which cover a much much bigger and uglier problem on the inside...the unseen blackness of what God sees throughout all of this creation.

I've still been having problems at my workplace, and my DH also has been going through some ugly things in his work environment. I often only focus on the seen, the people that become the focus of my irritation. I often forget about the larger context, the deeper, unseen element that is causing the little bit that we see of it, the scattered incidents here and there.

I once saw a movie on television of an adaptation of H.G. Wells "The Time Machine". In this story, a  scientist invents a machine that can carry him forward and backward in time. He travels to a future time where there are gentle "Eloi" and terrifying "Morlocks". The Eloi are beautiful and live peacefully, eating fruit, above the ground. The Morlocks are monstrously ugly, and live underground. Once in a while one comes out from underground and snatches an Eloi, whom he drags back underground, and has Eloi supper that evening. I think this movie is almost a parable of the hidden evil that is always there, just under the surface, and once in a while comes out in terrifying ways. We can live with the evil, as long as it "behaves in certain ways" and makes itself unseen, or serves the purposes we want from it. That fact in itself shows the hidden evil is there within us all.

Every time an ugly thought rises up in me, that is a Morlock rising up from the hidden depths, out to the light of day, and there is no way to beautify that ugly thing... it is ugly. All I can say is "God have mercy on me, a sinner".... And He does. :)