The storm raged unabated in the dark of midnight. The babysitter was thankful the children in her charge had slept through the rolling thunder, but would have been thankful for the company. At least she didn't have to fake the courage she didn't feel. The house was large and the thunder echoed through its halls. The babysitter turned the television volume to drown the onslaught of the rain. Following the earsplitting thunder, the lights sputtered once and then she was bathed in darkness. Thankful she had procured a flashlight as the storm hit, she looked out the living room window where she could see the street lights and night lights shining from other houses. “Great,” she thought, “now I have to go to the basement and flip the breaker.” Thinking she should ask for a pay raise, she took the flashlight and made her way to the basement door. Taking a deep breath, she began her trek down the steps, stumbling over the last step. She felt herself falling, her arms flailing to break her fall. The flashlight was released from her death-like grip to clatter away on the floor. As the rolling light passed over the usual contents of a basement, it suddenly illuminated something that shouldn't be there - a pair of legs, transparent and opaque, but clearly defined. The babysitter screamed into the night as the legs moved toward her.
There's nothing like a good ghost story, especially around Halloween. Ghosts represent the past - a moment in time for which we have no personal knowledge. However, the paranormal existence of a person long dead is not the ghosts that haunt most of us. Those of us haunted are not witnesses of the paranormal, but haunted by dead hopes and dreams, and the regrets that come from failures, mistakes, words unspoken, or words that should not have been uttered. These ghosts create havoc in our lives. These visions of the past invade our present, keeping us from living the life God has planned for us. The ghosts appear from the dark corners of our scarred hearts where all our memories exist, filling us with grief and fear of the future. We cannot see anything but their spectral image; we cannot see any future other than grief and sorrow and painful wishful thinking.
God does not intend for us to be haunted. We have all sinned and fallen short. However, Christ is merciful and faithful to forgive us, even when we can't seem to forgive ourselves. We hand Satan the tools to continually beat and haunt us by reliving the past over and over again. The ghosts haunt, taunt, and torment us with their dreadful voice; “You're a failure. Look at how many people you have hurt; you deserve this pain.” The ghosts surround us until all we can see is their image, forgetting we have the light of Christ to dissolve the night and banish the spirits of the night. We forget that Christ loves us, and in Him we have a future free from ghosts. “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).
We don't have to be haunted, unless we wish to be. I choose not to be haunted any longer. How about you? Are you among the haunted?