If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I write a lot about humility. About unity. About love, grace, and forgiveness. These aren’t just ideas I toss around; they’re convictions I live by.
But this week, I stood in a room that made all those words feel inadequate.
It was the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Most of you know the story. She was a teenage girl who had hidden in the attic for more than two years. She wrote what she saw, what she felt, what she feared. After her family was discovered, she was taken to a concentration camp. She died just weeks before it was liberated.
Her room is still there. The dim light flickering above. The growth marks and typical teen pictures on the wall. And the weight. I could barely breathe under the weight of it.
The moment I stepped into that room, I was reminded:
Evil exists.
Real evil. The kind that twists the truth into a lie. It erases. It destroys. And it ends in unimaginable destruction.
We have an enemy. He is evil. And he’s subtle.
Satan rarely kicks the door down. He slips in through the cracks.
With a tender suggestion. With calculated silence. With a lie that sounds just close enough to the truth. Worst of all, with an appeal to the selfish instinct buried deep in all of us.
He doesn’t need a tidal wave. Just a slow drift. A blind eye. A learned behavior. A quiet acceptance.
That’s how evil takes hold. And we’ve witnessed what happens when it does.
So I must guard against the darkness, starting with my own heart; my bias, my blind spots, the hidden judgement no one sees. By staying alert to the quiet ways evil tries to creep in, and even more alert to the gentle call of love.
Lord, soften my heart. Help me stay tender to Your constant presence and alert to the darkness of this world. Open my eyes to the lies that sound pleasing, and tune my spirit to the gentle ways that You guide me toward light and away from the dark.
"For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world..."
—Ephesians 6:12 (NLT)
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