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Oculi - The Third Sunday in Lent
My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net.
“What about the ROUS.’s,” Buttercup asks Wesley as they make their way through the Fire Swamp. “Rodents of Unusual Size?” He replies. “I don’t think they exist.” Fans of The Princess Bride know what happened in the split second after Wesley declares the ROUS’s don’t exist. He is attacked by one and almost dies in the fight. “I don’t think they exist,” he says. But they do exist.
One of the devil’s most effective tactics is to get people to think he doesn’t really exist. Like Wesley with the ROUS’s, he has heard of them and knows the name, but still, they don’t really exist. Even many Christians, while they have heard of the devil and know his name, well, “The devil? I don’t think he exists.” Or at least they don’t believe he has any real power in this world. They do, on the other hand, believe God exists and that He does have power in this world so the devil wins when the believe this lie: It is God’s fault when bad things happen, when there is evil in the world. Like Wesley in the Fire Swamp, the evil attack comes suddenly and viciously and if it isn’t the ROUS’s, if it isn’t the devil, then must be God’s fault when I suffer.
