Christian Fiction Review Blog: NEVER CEESE, by Sue Dent

Day 3, Tuesday

The curse! This is what the whole book is about. Ceese has been cursed and wishes to free herself from the curse. Richard has been cursed and has lost hope of ever being free from this curse. Their curses are similar, yet there are differences. For one, Ceese is cursed to be a wolf, a predator, with keen hearing, acute sense of smell and taste. Even in her human form these attributes are largely present. She is strong and powerful, but she also has the ability to give some of her power to another without cursing them. Richard, on the other hand is a creature of the night, a vampire who craves blood. If he does not receive fresh blood at proper intervals the hunger inside him begins to overtake his will. He can change shape and even levitate, but his heart has grown cold. Unlike Ceese, he views his existence as an eternal torment from which he cannot escape.

What is your curse? Do you feed on making others feel foolish or little? Do you crave violence? Do you run after pornography? Drugs? Alcohol? What is your curse? If you think you are not cursed, then you've missed the point of the whole story. Every one of us has been cursed. That's a sad thing to say, but it's true. The Law of God tells us just where we have failed and how the curse has affected us. The good news is there is an escape from our curse. For our curse is really an extension of Adam and Eve's rebellion against God. The good news is Jesus put the penalty for that curse to death on the cross, when He died for us. He came, Scripture says, to set captives free. The antidote for our curse is the mercy and love of God, which any can receive by the faith God gives to all.

Scars! Inevitably there will be scars left in us, even if we have accepted this cure, this freedom, this antidote from God, just as Richard still bore the scratch marks from Ceese on his back. The curse is gone, but there will still be some consequences. We can, however, rejoice, even in our scars, knowing they serve not as a pain in our lives, but they remind us from where we once were. They remind us that here we are, once cursed, standing in Christ before the Heavenly Father as His children. Those scars become beauty marks, reasons to rejoice. Come to think of it, Sue Dent even mentions a birthmark reappearing on Richard's neck. Do you suppose she was trying to tell us something?

[Special note: My computer went down and I wasn't able to gain access to the Internet. I could do almost everything else, but I couldn't get online. I tried everything I could think of, including calling technical support. They also couldn't help other than put in a work request that was supposed to be filled by 6 PM tonight. Then while laying in bed God spoke to me and asked me why I didn't come to Him. So I asked Him to fix the problem and got right on the first try. Praise the Lord. - David Brollier]