Monsters – Out from the Deep

What was your first monster movie? book? comic book? Which monster from your childhood brings a little shiver to you? Or maybe, they bring a chuckle? Considering the cheesy special effects many monster movies had and still have, maybe they didn’t scare you at all.

Deep in the recesses of my mind, I have a chuckle monster and a monster that makes me pull the bed sheets above my head. The scary monster – the Alien(s), especially the queen, from the Sigourney Weaver series, Alien. They mostly come out at night, mostly.

From Wiki, here are swamp monsters in lore …

• The Will-o’-the-wisp appears in swamps, and in some areas there are legends of it being an evil spirit.
• The Bunyip is a creature from Aboriginal mythology that lurks in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes.
• The Grootslang is a huge elephant-like creature with a serpent’s tail which according to legend lives in caves, swamps, freshwater in South Africa.
• The Lernaean Hydra in Greek and Roman mythology was the creature Heracles killed in the swamp near Lake Lerna.
• The Honey Island Swamp Monster is known in Louisiana.
• The skunk ape is a horrible-smelling large ape creature said to live in swamps in the Southeastern United States.

• The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp was the subject of a hoax in South Carolina in the late 1980s.
• The Prime Hook Swamp Creature is a dog-like animal that has been spotted in the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.

When I hike, I rarely am concerned about aquatic monsters, but their slithering cousins are always something for which to be on guard.

Interestingly, a water based monster is mentioned in Scripture – the large, slithering, coiled, and powerful … LEVIATHAN.

The Leviathan appears in Isaiah, Psalms and even Job (possibly the oldest written book of the Bible!) In Job 41 … “Nothing on earth is its equal—a creature without fear” 

In The Book of Job, Job is questioning God. This is something we still do today. We go through a tough circumstance and question God’s love, or His power, or His concern … maybe even His existence. But Job is shown that God is more powerful and controls the uncontrollable (by man’s standards) than the Leviathan.

This is encouraging … God controls the worst of monsters … God is bigger than any of our fears. Yesterday, a local pastor posted on social media that we should stop being worried about how bad this world is getting, and start praising the God who will one day put all this mess right.

No matter what you are going through, no matter what life throws at you – God is greater so you can trust Him.

In closing, in the words of the world’s most famous Asparagus … Junior …