On this day in 1962, Marilyn Monroe took a fatal dose of sleeping tablets to escape her complex life. Although she raised the ire of the secret service for her indiscrete sharing of JFK's inner thoughts and worked her way through a few husbands, she could find no satisfaction. How sad for a girl who had so much going for her ... beautiful, talented and desirable. Well it was not to be. After 36 hectic and often exciting years, she burnt out and left the world stage: but as Elton John noted, her legend lives on.
She reminds me of the woman at the well, one of the most insightful human exchanges ever recorded about Jesus. It was not a parable, but a real-life exchange that could take another two thousand years to fully interpret. What a remarkeable person He was, so wise and yet so profoundly economical in His style. He could convey a wealth of meaning in a sentence.
Like Monroe, the Samaritan woman had been though a number of men. But whilst she had six husbands, they all had one common wife. In making that point, with all subtlety, Jesus effectively made a point that applies to all of us. No matter how we may want to trace back to the many root causes of our life issues, those issues all point to a single common denominator, ourselves.
It was DL Moody who said, "I have had more trouble with myself than with anyone I ever knew". How right he was, for no matter who hurts us and no matter where we assume the roots of our crises to lie, our problems always start with us - either we make wrong choices or we allow ourselves to be diminished or we over react to life or we get hooked into the system by our wants and needs or we indebt ourselves in the pursuit of such wants and needs or we just allow others to do things to us that shouldn't be allowed.
The drastic steps as Monroe took, may offer some perceived respite for some, but in effect that just forces us to face what we deny, quicker. Unfortunately, by then it is too late for us to do anything to change the course of our lives. The better way is to come to the cross, acknowledging that we are indeed wretched and so in need of salvation, so that the grace and mercy of God can give us the respite of a new beginning.
But the story does not end there. It is an empirical fact that the majority of believers struggle anyway, in spite of the cross. The cross in effect only marks a turning point in a jurney that may yet take years or decades to unfold, but as we plod along the burdens will lift and we will learn to live anew. That is a promise.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ http://www.4u2live.net/
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