The Big Dark Swamp

 

 The Swamps of Life

Saved.

Our Earth is beautiful; its green grass, forests, oceans, and skies. A masterpiece of fabulous mountains, dry deserts, flowing rivers and falls. A magnificence of  vast skies adorned with the majestic splendor of  sun, moon, planets, and bright stars. A miraculous assortment of living things; birds, animals of all shapes and colors, and the most precious of all God’s creation; you and I.

But just like man-made wars and tornadoes, earthquakes and  hurricanes, volcanoes, quick sands, and dangerous swamps mercilessly interrupt earth’s splendor and beauty, our peaceful, inner tranquility and rest are similarly interrupted.

There dwells an ever-present evil and darkness, a serpent that once was in the Garden of Eden, always ready to interrupt our life’s beauty and wonder with doubts, deception,  evil, and darkness. A brutal and ruthless force determined to ensnare  us into the deep and terrorizing spiritual swamps of life.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

Genesis 3:1

The Bible doesn’t sugar coat my dire human predicament and yours, and  pulls no punches when it  comes to this Truth :

You and I; our human race, are stuck in a massive  dark swamp of sin that we can never get out from without outside help. This is like falling into the sticky, muddy swamps and marches of the impenetrable water of one of the largest Wetlands in the land, the Sudd of Southern Sudan,  or naively stumbling into   the northern hemisphere’s largest swamp ;  Russia’s Vasyugan Swamp’s slimy inescapable  peat filled mire.  

And yet, the swamp of evil and sin is way bigger and fiercest than The Sudd and The Vasyugan Swamp.

This outside help to get you and I unstuck  and pulled from the dark swamp of sin is what the angels announced to simple and clueless shepherds tending their sheep on that day when Jesus Christ was born.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch  over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Luke 2:8-14

And this is the same Good News announced by Jesus as He declared to a host of hostile and shocked religious teachers His Divine origin and mission to stick with us; the human race, so that He can get us unstuck, pulled out, and freed from our dark and inescapable Big Spiritual Swamp of sin.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,

Luke 4:18

But, you see friend we are mostly unaware of this dark swamp of sin that we are born into, stuck in and could very well die in. Our world and various cultures have adopted new norms where we no longer see a need to reverently fear or show obedience to a power greater than ourselves aka God.

God has become for many of us an imaginary figure, a product of our wishful thinking, and a presence that alternates between being totally silent, generally insignificant, plainly indifferent,  or one full of vengeance. Some of our supposedly enlightened  minds have belittled and  denigrated God into a cosmic, and  theoretical uncontrolled force that is either unreal or utterly detached from our human experience.

Many of us have already replaced God with money and smart phones, fun and pleasures, and addictions to someone or to something.

Friend, we live in a new world culture where we  do whatever we want, and whenever we feel like it. A world system where there is no longer right or wrong, good or bad but just choices, preferences and options that each can freely choose for himself or herself.

To many of us in this post modern world the pertinent questions of :

Sin?

Moral law?

Moral absolutes?

Right and wrong?

are nothing but remnants of old and backward thinking. A product of the unenlightened dark ages.

And so we remain stuck and captives of a dark big swamp that brings us pain, and misery.

Friend, you and I will always be  totally unaware of the  free life of love, hope and peace  awaiting us beyond the mire of our big swamp. That is until we stretch our hands to the loving hand of the Divine that will pull us from our Sudd and Vasyugan Swamps and save us.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
    out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
    and gave me a firm place to stand.

Psalm 40:2

Join me next blog as we uncover our arch-enemy, the Serpent of the Garden of Eve: The dark and evil serpent of the Big Swamp.

Adel G Hanna, MD

Author:

Soldier to Soldier, Heart to Heart

A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp