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