by needleeye

Created on: January 05, 2007   Last Updated: March 13, 2009

While I can't say that the children's books of Maurice Sendak are exactly a wellspring of deep spiritual insight, I would say that his picture book, Where the Wild Things Are (published by Harper & Row, Publishers), is a masterpiece in depicting our general attitude towards God, what we think about ourselves, and maybe a little bit of our spiritual predicament. Its pages have long reminded me of the story that Jesus told about another son (see Luke 11:15-35) also with a willful spirit, a rebellious wandering out into the wide world, and an eventual repentance and return to grace.

Sendak's little tale begins with, "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him WILD THING!' and Max said, I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything."

Although we loathe to admit it, there is within each of us an overwhelming impulse that passionately seeks to have its own way and, when yielded to, wreaks mischief of one kind and another and another. From the dawning of time when humanity first rebelled in the Garden (see Genesis 3), we have habitually exalted our own plans and ambitions above the loving directives given us by God. And so we don the wolf suit of selfishness, heedless of the implications of our defiance.

But there are great prices to pay when we choose to defy the loving plan of God. The first great tragedy of asserting our will above God's is, of course, disconcordance in our relationship with Him and the breaking of our fellowship with our Creator. Our disregard for the Lord's will and our wolfish pursuit to please ourselves disrupt His plan to enrich our lives, encourage our hearts, and envelop us with His peace and joy. Even subtle sins and passive rebellion to God's claim to our lives as Lord contaminate our lives and make us unfit to "enter His presence."

The second great tragedy results from the first. Having lost the immediacy of His divine presence, and bent on going our own way in the world, we are fated to find ourselves surrounded by terrors and monsters unleashed by such self-will. Fears enslave us, hatreds besiege us, pain and loss bind us as though they were great shackles forged in the heat of our pride and passions. Such woes and afflictions "roar their terrible roars, and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws." We may have succeeded in "sassing" God, but our only rewards are fearsome and awful friends with troubles and woe. But

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