It turns out monsters are real.
And the ones we should be
Worried about aren’t the ones
You read about on the news,
Or the ones we used to imagine
Hiding beneath our childhood beds,
Or lurking in the shadows
Near a haunted house,
Or ruling a dictatorship
In a foreign land.
No, it is the ones within
That are the most fearsome
The horrors within the heart
Of the average man that
Would render him friendless
By the end of the day
If they ever leaked out of his mind.
That insatiable desire for control
Or uncompromising bent towards selfishness
And the lengths we are willing to go
To fill the gaping holes
In our aching souls –
Those, it turns out,
Are the most formidable
Monsters we may ever fight,
Because they hide behind
Our best intentions,
Lurking in plain sight.
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
-Jeremiah 17:9