Day 32

 

An Unoccupied House

 

Then it says, "I will return to the house I left." When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.

 

Matthew 12:44

 

 

One day a young lady came into my office whose mind was stuck on "free parking," in the monopoly game of life. I don't know what was wrong with her except she was crazy. She had been by before and I had talked to her mom on the phone. Tragically this young lady that had gone scooters had a 3 year old daughter that was most often the adult in this 2 person family.

 

The grandmother had rescued the 3 year old for the day and the lady was sitting in my office talking to me. It was hard to focus on what she was saying because as we were talking her head would slowly tilt upwards until she was looking at the ceiling. Then she would grab her hands in both hands and pull it down so that she was once again looking at me.

 

This went on for a while so I asked her why it was going on. She told me an unseen force was pulling her head up. So I decided to have a roll call. I called out her name and asked if she was there and she said, "Yes." I called out my own name and answered, "Present." Then I called out, "Unseen Force? Anyone here named Unseen Force?"

 

No one answered.

 

So I said, "Well it seems to be just the 2 of us here now. Unseen Force appears to have left, so could you please stop the thing with your head?"

 

The day was just beginning though. After some more conversation with her and calling a doctor on the phone it was somehow decided that I should take her to the county hospital for a psych evaluation. So,  off we went to the hospital where it turns out they had treated her before. They let her into the lockdown psych ward and I sat out in the hallway. After a while a guy came out and asked if I would come in and sit with her because she was nervous and pestering them and they were very busy and hadn't been able to see her yet.

 

Once I was in the lockdown unit it was clear why they were so busy. There was a guy who was mightily struggling to escape as they were transferring him from one gurney to another. He was incredibly strong and I was really hoping he would not get lose. He was also saying some remarkably rude things about the astronaut Sally Ride.

 

The lady and I sat at a table watching this when she made the brilliant observation, "Everybody in here is crazy! Let's leave."

 

I was not about to leave until she had seen someone. There was another lady sitting across the table from us calmly talking on a pay phone so I said, "Look not everyone in here is so bad. That lady on the phone seems nice."

 

My timing was perfect. The lady on the phone began to cuss out what was apparently her mother on the phone, telling her it was all her fault. She slammed down the phone in anger, hanging it up. She immediately picked up a quarter, dialed her mom back up and started the cussing again. She slammed it down again, grabbed still another quarter dialing up dear old mom again.

 

This caught the attention of one of the staff who told her to stop. She did. She hung up the phone, climbed up on the table, stood up and shouted, "I am going to kill everybody in here!"

 

To which I replied, "That's just great."

 

The staff chased her around the unit as she leaped from bed to bed with psychotic agility, all the while promising to kill us all. Eventually they captured her and eventually they got around to seeing the lady I had brought. They gave her some medication and told me to take her home. I don't know if the medication helped or if she was just scared straight by the lockdown unit but on the way home she seemed much better.

 

The question comes to my mind how do you know when a person is just crazy or if they are demon possessed? Yes, I do believe that people can be demon possessed. It happened in Jesus' day; I see no reason why it shouldn't happen today. I've heard missionaries that work in places where there are animistic religions, who believe they have seen demon possessed people. So, I think it can happen though I don't believe it does happen all that often. For one thing, in our society imagine the bad press Satan would get it there were loads of demon possessed people running around. Satan can keep plenty busy and keep a low profile and lull people into thinking that he or any other spiritual reality does not exist.

My first thought when I see someone acting crazy is that they are just that, crazy. Perhaps they can be medically helped or they may need to institutionalized.

 

Jesus talks about a person who was demon possessed and then the evil spirit leaves. Later the evil spirit returns to that same person who has cleaned their life up because their "house is unoccupied."

 

That is the danger of an unoccupied house. You can live a good moral life (at least by human standards) and be unoccupied. There is a void where God should be and somebody or some thing that is not worthy of the God spot in your life moves in. The good news for Christians is if a demon should try to occupy you, he will find the Holy Spirit is already there and saying, "Sorry, no room in the inn."

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Matthew 12:22-29, 43-45

 

• How could the crowd tell Jesus had healed the demon possessed man?
• What did the Pharisees accuse Jesus of?
• What is the danger of an "unoccupied" house?