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Writer's pictureCoco

Coco Calling No.147 - Caught Between Good and Evil


I wonder how “good” I really am? I have my faults I know, but do you think I’m good enough to please my Creator in Heaven? Or are there some days when He’s looking down on me and saying: “Oh that bird’s gnawing the furniture again!” or “He’s stealing from the fruit bowl!”


And is there really a dark force out there called Satan? Is it because of him that I get the urge to do things which I know to be wrong? Do I oscillate backwards and forwards between the two of them because I’m not strong enough to stay on God’s side? Is my free will my downfall? Will I be good enough to get into Heaven? Questions, questions, questions.


But actually, I’m not the only one asking these questions. Even human children are not too certain about the scheme of things here on Earth….


On the outskirts of a small town, there was a big Horse Chestnut tree growing inside the perimeter wall of a cemetery. One day, two boys went there to collect conkers. The tree had enjoyed a very fruitful season, and before long, the boys had filled several buckets to the brim. So they sat down, out of sight at the base of the tree and began dividing up their conkers.




“One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me” said one of the boys. As they were dividing them up, a couple more conkers fell down to the ground and rolled down an incline to the base of the wall.


And at that moment, another boy came riding along the road on his bicycle on the other side of the wall. As he passed, he thought he heard voices from inside the cemetery, so he slowed down to investigate. Sure enough, he heard: “One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me.” This boy jumped back onto his bicycle and raced home. His mother was out on an errand, but his little brother was playing on his trike in the garden. “Come quickly” said the boy to his brother. “You won’t believe what’s going on at the cemetery. Satan and the Lord are busy dividing up all of the dead souls between them!”


So quickly and quietly, the two brothers cycled to the cemetery and stopped by the wall.



Photo credit: Pixabay


Shaking with fear, they tried climbing up and looking over the top, but they couldn’t see anything. But they could still hear the voices: “One for you, one for me. One for you. One for me. That’s it. We’ve finished! Oh no we haven’t. There’s still those couple of strays down by the bottom of the wall. Let’s go and get ‘em!”


And in a split second, on the other side of the wall, the little boy’s trike and his brother’s push bike accelerated away with the velocity and thrust of a rocket!


So you see, these little bothers weren’t too sure about God’s intentions and their own worthiness. To such an extent that they thought that God and Satan had made a pact with one another to divide up the spoils equally. A great many adult humans are just as confused. A survey carried out by a Dr. George Barna at the Arizona Christian University last year (2020) revealed that more Americans believe in the existence of Satan (56%) than in God Himself (51%).


Hopefully most practicing Christians know about God because of Jesus’ time here on Earth. Satan remains more of an enigma. For some, Satan is an actual physical entity. For others he’s an evil force. And there are many humans that believe he is the “evil seed” inside all humanity; a kind of contaminate which ruined God’s craftmanship. For all we know, Satan might be one of these things or all of them combined. But more importantly, what about God? The same God that offers us good instead of evil, Heaven instead of Hell, light instead of darkness, love instead of hatred and peace instead of torment? Should we be afraid of this kind of God? A God that would even send His own son to Earth to rescue humanity?


To understand God, we need to understand love. And sometimes it’s only after we’ve recognised the extent of our own failings that we can fully appreciate the extent of God’s love for us….


“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (John 3:16-17)


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