What Lies Beneath

The Lord has come to bring light into our lives, and when we encounter or uncover areas of darkness that limit or inhibit us in moving forward in Him, then it's important that we deal with those hidden thoughts and intents, past areas of sin that continue to affect us adversely.   And, that can only be done through the power of the Spirit and the restorative power of the Word of God. Jesus taught in Luke 11:
34The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.35Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness.36If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light."

Because we have the light of Christ in us, we have the possibility each day to choose to walk in His light. And, where there are areas of darkness that reside deep within our hearts - hidden sin, misplaced priorities, painful memories, and detrimental life experiences - we can rely on the power of the Spirit to identify and help us to eradicate the harmful effects so that we might live in the freedom that Christ offers.  But, we have to be willing to allow the penetrating light of the Holy Spirit to show us the areas that hold us back from moving forward in Christ.

God desires for us to rely on His Word, His truth, to expose areas in our lives that are not pleasing to Him, that perhaps we have buried deep in our souls, but can still cause trouble.   He wants to bring us into a position of freedom.  Here is what 2nd Corinthians 3 says:
16Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.17Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.18But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Do you remember the Atari video game manufacturer?    Well, you may actually have one or two of those games around the house - or maybe they were thrown out with the antiquated system that you may have once owned.   You may even have one of the 3.5 million copies of the "E.T." video game, based on the popular movie, that was hurriedly rolled out in time for Christmas in 1982.  

The game was a colossal flop, hobbled not only by its short development time but by a license and royalty agreement that promised the film's director, Steven Spielberg, $21 million, according to Curt Vendel, the co-author of a book about the Atari company, released in 2012, who was quoted in a recent CNN story.  The company needed to sell out of the 5 million units it produced to break even; it sold about 3.5 million by the following fall, he said.

About the time "E.T." hit the shelves, a poor and badly delayed earnings report troubled investors, "and everybody started running to go sell," Vendel said. At its peak, it employed about 11,000 people; it was shedding employees by the thousands in 1983, and had only about 900 left by the time it closed down.

And, what about the unsold units of the dud of a game?  Reportedly, many of them were dumped in a landfill in New Mexico and covered in concrete.  But, over the weekend, with a couple of hundred onlookers watching, excavators led by a documentary film crew began to unearth stacks of 30-year-old Atari cartridges from a landfill outside Alamogordo.

"Urban legend CONFIRMED," Larry Hryb, one of the creators of Microsoft's Xbox gaming platform, reported via Twitter from the dig site. Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios is one of the backers ofthe planned documentary, tentatively titled "Atari: Game Over." Hryb also tweeted a photo of the first cartridge to be dug out.

Vendel said the "E.T." cartridges were just one of more than 20 titles found over the weekend, and may not make up more than a fifth of the estimated 700,000-plus units the ailing Atari discarded in 1983, he said. As far as he's concerned, the great "E.T." caper remains "a myth."

One of those on hand at the landfill Saturday was Howard Scott Warshaw, the game's designer.  He said,
"I've been carrying this thing, the theoretically worst video game of all time, for 30 years now...It was a game that was done in five weeks. It was a very brief development. I did the best that I could, and that's OK."   He also said, "I don't really believe it's one of the worst games ever, but I really like it when people identify it that way." And because he also designed of one of Atari's best-rated games, "Yars' Revenge," he said, "I have the greatest range of any game designer in history."

But, at least at this point, a mystery in video game lore has actually been confirmed.   Amazing what can actually be buried below the surface of the earth, and there is great curiosity sometimes to find out what is down there, because old stories can be told or retold and old answers can be discovered.  

Spiritually speaking, there are things that we bury in our hearts that can actually be harmful to us if they are not uncovered and removed.   I really do think that we act the way we do because of negative thought patterns or bad experiences that we bury underneath the layers of life or perhaps the layers of denial that we never deal with.  I'm certainly not suggesting that we try to dig up forgiven sin that God says has been cast into the sea of forgetfulness - we don't go fishing there.   And, we can learn from our past mistakes and move forward in the power and presence of God's Spirit.

But, what about those areas of unforgiven sin, unresolved relationship issues, and troublesome thoughts and attitudes that lie beneath the surface, that are certainly not useful, but perhaps still nag at us subconsciously?   In some cases, we need to go digging so that we can remove them and experience God's freedom.

That's where we have to rely on the probing presence of the Holy Spirit, the One who will help us to understand why we behave in a certain manner and point out ways that are embedded in our souls that can ensnare us.   As we expose ourselves to the Word of God, that we're told in Hebrews 4 will be a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, we can depend on truth to help expose the error of our past behavior that can continue to haunt us and perhaps even control us.   

A healthy understanding of ourselves can come through immersing our minds in the Word of God and being willing to change - for the better, in a manner that brings increased glory to our Savior.