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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: CHILL (10/29/15)
I came home to an empty house again that evening. I was a brand-new widow. The funeral papers were still piled up on my desk. I hadn’t moved them because I had gone back to work right after my husband’s burial in order to keep my new job as a librarian.

My task that night was to review a movie, which I sometimes had to do before ordering at the library. It was the last Harry Potter movie. Years before I had read some of the early Harry Potter books and concluded, along with other librarians, that the magic in the books was akin to the magic in fairy tales – just a literary device. I decided that the themes were mainly of friendship, loyalty and the young hero’s journey.

But by the end of this night I had changed my mind.

How was I even functioning so soon after watching my husband slip out of this world and into the next? I should still have been in paralyzing shock, but I was not moving under my own power. Getting up for work was the result of prayer – mine and the prayers of others. I prayed all day long for God to grant me the strength to respond to all the demands of the day.

The result was the conscious awareness of spiritual energy lifting me with every breath I took. I never saw or heard anything otherworldly, but my spiritual receptors were telling me that I was not alone. I was being aided, helped and strengthened, just like it says in Isaiah 41: “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee…”

So I continued to go from one task to another. One this particular night I ate dinner in the den and inserted the Harry Potter DVD. After about an hour I became agitated with all the violence, the screaming and Halloween-like characters trying to kill children. So I turned off the sound and went to another room to get ready for bed. A few minutes later I re-emerged to continue my review.

That’s when I felt it: an unmistakable chill in the room. It hit me like an invisible wall. I came to a halt in the middle of the den and glanced at the thermostat, but it was still warm in the house. What was it? I describe it as a chill, but it was more like an absence of something – an absence of warmth or something or someone. This absence left me feeling like I was in the vicinity of a cold black hole.

I saw or heard nothing with my physical senses, but as I glanced around trying to understand what had changed, my eyes fell upon the TV – the Harry Potter movie was still playing. Immediately I understood what the chill was – it was the absence of the Spirit of the Lord!

I ran to the TV, snatched the DVD out, tossed it onto a table on the back porch and slammed the door. I felt like a fool. It was a children’s movie, after all! My coworkers would have said I’d lost my mind. How could it have affected the spiritual atmosphere of my home? Could the Christian critics have been correct in their assessment of the magic in the story being a doorway to the occult? At that moment I was convinced they were right. I knew I had to repent.

So I went to my place of prayer and asked God’s forgiveness. I begged for His Spirit to return to my home and for His spiritual protection. Gradually the chill retreated and I felt the return of the loving spiritual energy that had sustained me for the past few weeks. I was – and still am – dependent upon it like oxygen. I was able to sleep only after I was sure my prayers for forgiveness had reached the Throne.

Later I began to research the debate about the occult influences in the Harry Potter movies. There are many occult signs, symbols and practices in the stories that the average believer simply does not recognize. But we do not have to do research. We just have to follow what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 18, 10-12: witches and wizards are an abomination to the Lord. Period! No review is needed! We only need faith in the Word of God.

747 words This is a work of non-fiction
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Sanna Scales
11/11/15
Thank you for sharing this. It is So true how the enemy can attack. Your story is well written.
Loni Bowden-Horn
11/12/15
It is chilling how the enemy uses tactics that are seemingly innocent a first glance. Thank you for sharing how much evil is projected in the Harry Potter movies.