The Haunting

When I was young, I remember watching a movie starring Vincent Price as a mad scientist who developed this elaborate system for draining blood from people so that he could transfuse it into himself. I don't remember the plot or the story line or how the movie ended, but the image of all those tubes and bottles seared itself into my brain and even creeps into my dreams now from time to time. As an adult, I never watch scary movies, and I attribute my aversion to the genre to that early movie-watching experience ... good old Vincent Price succeeded in scaring me forever.

Tonight is Halloween, and I've opened my front door to Ninja Turtles, Spiderman, princesses, Iron Man, cowboys, soccer players, ballerinas and without a doubt the cutest little red devil I've ever seen. It was, however, the mad scientist who rang my doorbell who sent shivers up my spine and caused that old sense of fear to sweep over me just as it did in my youth. Yep, all these years later, a little guy dressed like a mad scientist asking for candy completely creeped me out, and the vision of Vincent Price and all his tubes and bottles haunted me.

As I closed my door and turned off the porch light tonight, my thoughts turned to another kind of haunting ... the haunting that sometimes covers me when I begin to think about the mistakes I've made in my life, the sins I've committed, the people I've wounded. Though my head knows that God has forgiven me because I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, my heart at times has a really difficult time forgiving myself. I've often wondered why forgetting past sins seems to be so hard, why memories and promises of grace can so quickly be replaced with regret and self-loathing. Perhaps it is the innate nature of us as humans to repeatedly chastise ourselves, to punish ourselves somehow for what we see as shortcomings or failures in our lives.

It's time to ready myself for bed, and as He is always faithful to do, God has taken my haunting and changed it to thanksgiving ... thanksgiving for His forgiveness, for the clean slate He gives me each morning, for the release from sin He offers unconditionally. And as He is also faithful to do, He brought to my mind a true jewel from His Word ... Psalm 103:12 ... "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

Pretty sure that means that nothing should haunt me since I belong to Him. Pretty sure that means that I'm forgiven. Completely, totally, through grace alone ... forgiven.