A Guest Post With a Powerful Word

Good morning, lovelies! I just finished applying my mascara, but I didn’t want to wait too long this morning before I hopped on here this morning to share something with you all. Truth be told, Beth and I filmed a video blog on Tuesday, but after much headache and technical difficulties, I didn’t get it downloaded until late last night so, we decided to save it for Monday because of our SSMT post tomorrow. In the meantime, however, we have a friend, Crista Merrell, that is dear to both of us and she also heads up the ministry to women at our church. Yesterday she wrote a powerful post on the Bayou City Blog for our church and I asked her permission to share it on here as well. So, would you ladies please welcome our dear friend with open hearts and minds today?

Thank you so much, Crista, for sharing this powerful Word!

 

In 1818, an anonymously written, dream-based manuscript called The Modern Prometheus about a maddish scientist and his highly unorthodox experiment surfaced in London. You and I know the tale better as Frankenstein, and given the current season, it’s not difficult to conjure an image of Boris Karloff in his 1930s role as Victor Frankenstein’s creature—square head and hulking shoulders, bolted neck and awkward stride. Did you know that Frankenstein isn’t the monster’s name? It’s the scientist’s. But the characters of creature and created are so intertwined that we don’t even bother to separate them. We just call them by the same name: Frankenstein.

Frankly (I couldn’t resist), we can relate to the tangle of Frankenstein and his creature. There’s a familiar scene that plays out in our lives. In Victor Frankenstein’s obsession to create is our drive to achieve something amazing and unheard of. We want to do, know, raise more. And it consumes us to the point of abandoning what we know as truth and the freedom that grace gives us to partner with God in creating meaningful existence in our own lives is exchanged for the illusion of power and control. Frankenstein creates his ugly monster and we build our own monster: sin, selfishness, idolatry.

The last half of the novel finds Frankenstein and his creation in a cycle of death and destruction that tempts the reader to walk away but compels further engagement because of the need for resolution. Both Frankenstein and his monster are driven by the goal of destruction of the other, and the story ends very badly with Frankenstein pursuing the monster to the icy north only to die from illness, the monster to weep for his creator and then to depart further into the icy north to die.

But tell me this: Are you able to fully grasp how far your monster is removable from you? How very separable you are?

I Peter 2:24 says, “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” Bad news for Frankenstein, when he laid himself down to die, he never got up again. Good news for you and me, when we lay ourselves down to die we bury our old selves—that sin and selfishness and idolatry, and we can learn to live without the monster of guilt and condemnation hanging around threatening our fullness of life. We get to send it off on a block of ice to be cast far away from us for, as Micah 7:19 says, “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” We trade our sin monster for His great name!

So for all of us Frankensteins, life may be wild and appear loosely chaotic, but it isn’t a horror novel. It’s created by the perfect plan, purpose, and pleasure of a loving God who delights in us unchangingly. And can I hear a “Hallelujah!”…He is the slayer of all of our monsters.