Our scene begins as the dastardly Snidely Whiplash
ties Nell Fenwick, doe-eyed-damsel-in-distress, to the railroad tracks as an oncoming train can be heard in the distance.
Sound familiar? Not surprising. Nell’s been on these tracks before. Not to mention the time before
that when she was headed toward certain death tied to a log perilously close to a madly spinning circular saw. However,
Ms. Fenwick has nothing to fear. Dudley Doright is on his way to save the day… again.
Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I wonder why
Nell doesn’t get a clue. Sure Dudley will save her. He doesn’t mind the in the least, it’s job security,
but couldn’t Nell save him the trouble by being just a little smarter? She keeps falling for the same stuff over
and over.
It reminds of me of those scenes in B horror movies:
There’s a killer on the loose, but still a hapless young female decides to go for a swim… alone… at night…
in the very woods where the madman has slain several of her close personal friends. Predictably, Jason/Freddy/Michael/Whoever
finds her and the pursuit begins. She runs dramatically through the forest until she trips and falls. Does she
get up and start running again? Why heavens no! She stays there and lets herself become part of the body count.
Not exactly the brightest crayon in the box is she? But before we get too judgmental, let’s remember that we too
are not always the best at keeping ourselves out of trouble.
Proverbs 26:11 tells us, “As a dog returns to
its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” Not exactly an attractive word picture, but true nonetheless. We
know that (fill in the blank) is not good for us, yet we find ourselves stuck in that place over and over again. It’s
even hard to learn the hard way sometimes.
Just like Nell and Dudley, God comes to rescue us
from ourselves time and time again. While it’s true that Satan is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, but
sometimes I wonder if we are making his job a little too easy. More often than we’d like to admit, we are
the authors of our own demise, pulling our own houses down on our heads.
God has given us all the tools we need to grow and
mature and to defeat our enemies. We have armor, but we don’t wear it. We have the sword of the spirit,
which is the word of God, but we don’t ever take it out of its sheath. Paul writes in Romans 7:15, “I do
not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Pretty pathetic plight, huh?
Well, it doesn’t have to be. Paul goes on to write in Romans 8:5 that, “Those who live according to the
sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their
minds set on what the Spirit desires.”
It’s about changing our mindset; it’s
about changing our social circle; it’s about changing those habits that we know are destructive, but God doesn’t
expect you to do it alone. Changing our mindset isn’t about gritting our teeth and breaking a sweat. True
change is a spiritual change. Romans 8:10-11 says, “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin,
yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you,
he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
The same power that resurrected Christ from the dead can resurrect us from the role of perpetual victim to warrior for God.
We must do our part in submitting to the Spirit and let the Spirit do his perfect work in us.
Dudley Doright deserves a day off every once in awhile.
© Sandra Perry 2004
