Torment of A Scorpion
Tuesday October 8, 2002 – some 17 years ago – I walked into my first AA meeting. I, being filled with false pride and hubris, couldn’t wait to raise my hand, announce my name and state that I am an alcoholic. Letting these other, half-hearted, alcoholics know that a real alcoholic had entered the room was important. They needed to know they were in the presence of a great alcoholic.
For the next three months, right up until December 7, 2002, my days were filled with regret, anger, sadness, self-loathing, fear, more fear and then lots more fear. I was afraid I would be found out as not just a charlatan alcoholic, but a charlatan all the way round. Just another garden variety drunk with a broken life, a broken soul and completely disconnected from God.
The list of adjectives above are merely the beginning. The torment within where the mind and heart are battling to do the right thing or to do what has always been done became a minute by minute battle within. The sting of a scorpion would have been a distraction from having my soul ripped, my heart crushed and my brain reeling, spinning like a whirling top filled with marbles, broken glass and screws.
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Revelation 9 ESV
1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.
2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.
3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth.
4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone.
6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
