But it’s not a woman I’m talking about, lest I be misunderstood. I’m talking about a sworn enemy who is at the same time, sometimes, a [false] friend I want to cuddle with… It’s complicated.
At time I’m aware of the danger of its—yes, it! —proximity, but somehow I find myself playing with it, and like any cunning serpent, it ends up biting.
The problem isn’t that I tasted of the forbidden fruit once. It isn’t that I was deluded once. But the problem is that I keep on believing in these lies. In fact, I find myself selling the precious things I own to purchase that very lie. ‘Like a wild donkey wondering alone, I’ve hired for myself lovers.’
I tread the living fountain for a broken cistern that cannot hold water on a regular basis and I can’t help giving away my delicacies for a cheap, comforting lie. What is it that makes me act that way? What is it that makes me rush right into a snare like a bird?
“I do not understand my actions, for I do not do the good I want but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
I thought of eradicating that thing that kept pulling me down that blind alley by putting some restrictions and setting up some rules to stop me from sliding down that road. But, gritting my teeth into not doing something with only sheer will isn’t the solution.
The more I try to fight it, the more I realize that I’m unable to overpower it. There are times I get an apparent victory but then after that, few steps ahead, there’s a deluge of flaming darts that tears me to shreds.
O, wretched man that I am! How will I get these shackles off and walk in freedom? Who will free me from this evil that, strangely enough, is inside of me—it’s right here, inside of me.
When I looked inside me, I found that it has been so entrenched within me that I lost the hope that it will ever get untangled. It seems to me that the more I try to unsnarl it, the more I find that the tangle patterns are so complex. The jumble has been wreaking havoc within me, it’s stench of death strangling me but also giving me an intense yearn for a clean and pure breath of grace.
I want to live, to move, to breathe, free from the sin that ‘so entangles me so quickly.’ Even though I know my corruption will still set up limitations, I thank God that I have that hope, me, a worm that was shown grace to be called for a divine purity.
Added to that, He has come to free us from the ‘low-lying black cloud’ by giving us the Spirit of life that is in Him which, like a ‘strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing me from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.’
The evil dilemma has been solved, and I’m not mourning like a hopeless man, torn apart between one way and another. But I’ll trust and look unto him through the life of whom God looks to me with grace and favor and who set it right once for all that I might walk in newness of life. In his victory over sin and death, I stand
Further Readings: Romans 7:15-8:11, Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 2:13, Proverbs 5
Image credit: Caught up in the shadow of the past - Saturated, Sara
