Ever watch South Park? I love South Park. You know you’ve really arrived when South Park makes fun of you. One of my favorite episodes is the one featuring “psychic” John Edwards. South Park is brilliant because they pack a lot of truth into their mockery. One of the scenes details how “psychics” like John Edwards operate on a crowd to do their “spot on readings”.
The sad thing is that there are so many of these jokers out there, and mostly what they’re doing is taking advantage of grief-stricken people. A mother loses a child, a husband loses his wife, a young woman loses her father… what would they give for a message from beyond the grave? An assurance that their loved one is at peace? That they’ve forgiven them?
Right now I’m sitting in my living room, on my couch with my feet up, watching a scary movie. My dog is sitting next to me, and outside it’s chilly, damp and miserable. But I know that somewhere out there, someone reading this blog needs to know what I’m about to say.
The name begins with an M. Is that you? I have a message for someone whose name begins with an M. You’ve experienced some kind of loss lately, and the event triggered something from your past. You lost someone a long time ago. Someone important to you died. You weren’t ready to lose this person. It might have been an illness, something to do with heart or maybe lungs. This person wants you to know that they are still with you, you are right when you think you feel them with you. This person wants you to know that they understand what you’re going through right now because they went through the same thing when they were your age. Does that make sense? Do you know who I mean?
Chances are there’s someone reading this right now who’s thinking, “Holy crap, she NAILED it!”
There are people out there who make a LIVING doing just that. It’s so easy to do when there’s a live audience. All you have to do is pick up on visual clues, or spoken clues that the audience is feeding you without even knowing they’re doing it. Even easier is when you do it online, like in a Facebook Live feed or something, for example. There’s a buffoon I know who has been doing this for a long time now, and he actually has the audacity to say that these are God-given gifts he has (all the while he’s cussing people out and threatening them, but that’s a story for another day). Online, you can actually research your viewers while you’re keeping them “entertained” with general tidbits of information and fishing for more.
You know what the devil thrives on? The human ego. We love the illusion of control and we love to be at the center of things. We love to go to fortune tellers because what are they talking about? They’re talking about US! We love to talk about US! Why do I need to pay someone to tell me that I was in a car accident three years ago? Or that I lost my grandmother when I was seven? Don’t I already know that? Sure, I do, but now we’re talking about my favorite subject – ME!
Wait, I have another “message” for someone out there reading this blog. You’ve become what you never wanted to become. Your life changed when you were eleven years old. Something happened that altered the way you receive love and it changed your course in life and now you are what you didn’t want to be. How do I know this? Pfffft… doesn’t it apply to everyone? Are any of us really who we thought we would be? And who can even remember what happened when we were eleven? Eleven is a rocky age, anyway, hormones are flying all over the place, our bodies are changing, we’re poised on the brink of teenage years, who didn’t have anything life-altering happening at that age? Again, though, we’re back to my favorite topic – ME!
The Bible tells us to die to self. Paul writes a lot about that in his letters. He writes about dying to self daily, says he has been crucified with Christ so it is no longer he himself but Christ who lives in him.
So, on one side we have God who encourages us to think LESS of SELF…. who do you think might be on the polar opposite side who wants us to only think about our favorite topic – ourselves?
Tracy Petry 
Very well written !!
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