I could go into a long story about how one of my favorite aspects of soteriology is found in Exodus 12 and the blood of the sacrifice on the doorposts of the houses of the Israelites, but I won't. Instead, I'll go directly into the story of what we recently found above our door. You see, for a while Erin had noticed an enveloped taped to the wall high above our front door. Since the ceilings here are pretty high, and we're both pretty lazy, we let it go, only imagining the big piece of wall that had been chipped-at underneath the envelope.
At the same time, there had been some...different things happening in our house.
It started with our money. Little by little, sometimes big by big, would disappear from the places where our money is kept safely. One morning Erin went to shower. At that time, she had been keeping close tabs on her money, as we'd seen so much disappear. She counted it before she showered. Our house helper and I were the only ones in the house, and when Erin came back, some of the money from her wallet in her purse was gone.
Now, logically, the house helper was the only one who could have taken it. And yes, even though our house helper treats us like her own children and we think of her as family, we did suspect maybe she was doing it. We were hurt and a little angry. I confronted her about the issue, not directly casting blame, but just letting her know what was going on. Erin and I prayed that whatever had happened would stop, that we would be able to forgive Ibu Mila, with whom we are trying to be lights, and that it would all go away.
The very next day, I came home and had a significant sum of money in my wallet from my most recent trip to the ATM. I put my bag in my room and went to help Ibu Mila in the kitchen. Two hours later, I had a portion missing. Ibu Mila hadn't left my side.
At this point, for a while that at the time did not seem connected, both Erin and I had experienced a darkness in our house. When Erin was here, I would pray as I was walking around the house, not liking the weird feeling. I would pray in the bathroom. Pray as I used the shower. It wasn't a good feeling. I didn't know it at the time, but Erin was feeling the same thing, and was praying every night before she went to bed that nothing evil would enter the house. Then more recently, Erin woke up several nights in a row, petrified for no reason but feeling something bad.
By far the strangest thing happened one night in Erin's room. She woke up to a light noise in the middle of the night. Assuming it was a magnet falling off her dry erase board, she rolled over and went to sleep. The next morning, Erin saw something underneath her bed, at the foot. It was a Chinese coin. To understand the weight of this, you have to know Erin. Her room is impeccably neat. She had just remade her bed the day before. There was nothing in her blankets but blankets. Moreover, even though her friend had recently traveled here from China, she had never owned a Chinese coin, and did not know where it could have come from.
Being Americans, we tried to think of as many scientific reasons as we could before we even thought of the spiritual realm. (Which, by the way, is very real here. Very. And not fun, although thankfully aside from these incidents I've been blessed to not witness its power.) We still can't explain what all happened, and of course people in the West will think it is ridiculous, but there is a striking darkness that is over the darker places in the world, and this sure is one of them. You don't have to be "sensitive" to the spiritual world or even be seeking it out to feel it, it's just there.
One night a friend of ours saw the envelope above our door. He decided to take the envelope down, only to find out that when he did it, inside were some incantations and stones.
We believe the weird animistic spell that was meant to keep spirits out of the house for the previous owners was actually acting as an invitation. We know the ultimate solution isn't to get rid of the envelope, but we did. We know the real solution is to worship the Conqueror of sin and death, which we do and will continue to do if more weird things keep happening.
Yesterday, I read one of the best...collection of thoughts...on spiritual warfare. It's a long article, but it's very biblical and insightful without fanning fanatacism and promoting Exorcist t-shirts. Highly recommended.
