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December 4th 2009
A few weeks ago in church I told one of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. In the 17th century he used them to teach godly principles to a rather godless world.
The story was Little Red Riding Hood. She was a picture of a good person on a righteous mission—to take food to her sick grandmother. But on the way to fulfill her mission, she met with adversity. The wolf, dressed as a friend who was there to help Little Red Riding Hood, deceived her.
You know the story. His ploy was to delay her so he could run to grandma’s house and foil her good mission. Ultimately, she saw through his plot and when she cried, Little Red was rescued by the woodcutter.
In Perrault’s story, the little girl was all of us who are trying to do good to others. The wolf was the devil in one of his disguises and the woodcutter who saved the day was God.
Sometimes the devil likes to dress up as an angel of light. His tactic is deception and so he cuddles up to us, offers us satisfaction of our basic lusts, power, notoriety and unlimited wealth. As you think about it, you can easily see how our entire nation has been seduced by his sinister approach. Consider the marketing of cigarettes as an example. They are presented by naïve actors as soothing, refreshing, satisfying, cool and sexy; when in reality cigarettes are dirty, stinking, addictive, disease producing, expensive killers. And yet we buy them and smoke them by the billions. That one simple example shows us how subtle and sinister our adversary is.
Last spring, I walked out the back door of our church building and saw something which reminded me very much of the devil’s cunning work. We have a weed here in British Columbia called Morning Glory. It hardly looks like a weed, it has soft green leaves and beautiful lily-like snow while blossoms. But Morning Glories are a weed. They are vine-like, crawling plants that extend their clutches many feet from their root source. They subtly climb up existing plants and trees, wrap their clingy arms around them and will literally choke out their life breath. I’ve seen healthy fifteen foot shrubs be choked to their death by smiling and attractive Morning Glories. To kill them is next to impossible, but the best thing to do is trace their long stems to their roots and pull them out at the source. If allowed to continue to proliferate, angelic Morning Glories will steal the very life out of an otherwise beautiful garden. The devil’s like that. Although he may look like a beautiful flower, he is actually a poisonous weed bent on choking the life out of us.
Yes, the devil indeed is a real creature and he does have supernatural powers, but we don’t have to be afraid of him. As a matter of fact, you can thank God for him because as the patriarch Job learned the hard way, his opposition is often used by God to make us strong and press us into a close relationship with our creator.
- Barry Buzza
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