A Devotion for Stranger Things

It used to be that, during the summer months, television audiences had to take a break from their favorite programming. Series used to take a summer break and reruns and special programs like the Olympics and Wimbledon were the only “new” things on our screens.

Thanks to streaming services like Netflix, summer has become a time of premieres – soapy dramas, dark comedies, and even new movies, are now all shown throughout the season, providing needed distraction from the heavy humidity and dreary summer storms.

One of these summer shows premiering its third season this month is Stranger Things. Netflix’s hit series is a sci-fi/fantasy one centered on the residents of a small town in Indiana as they face a supernatural mystery that has left one boy missing.

The show is an entertaining mix of shows like X-Files and Fringe, mixed with the 80s feel of films like E.T. and The Goonies. It’s a well-written, well-shot show, with great nostalgic music and some incredible acting by a group of young kids.

Now, I won’t give away too many spoilers here, but at the heart of the show, there’s a theme found in many summer buddy movies: a group of kids facing some unknown or mysterious entity. Kids band together, learn things about themselves and the world around them that adults maybe don’t understand. They face demons within and without, finding strength in their friendships and realize truths that will shape them for years to come.

The world of Stranger Things is a world of monsters, of shadowy alternative realities, of things that go bump in the night, and nightmares that happen in broad daylight.

It's a pretend world, but it is not far from reality.

Every day, we can find and see darkness in our world. Monsters perhaps not of fang and claw, but of poverty and violence threaten our safety. Darkness in the form of doubt, depression and addiction creeps just as stealthily as any creature in a shadowed wood.

We ask, “Where is God in a world of darkness?”

In the town of Hawkins, Indiana, a group of thrown-together kids and allies become a rag-tag community, an unlikely group that teams up to search for answers, to tell the truth, willing to go to the ends of the earth to find their friend. They are committed to fight against the darkness, together.

When faced with monsters in our own lives, who are the people that fight the darkness with you?

My hope is that it is the gathered community of the people of God called the church.

The darkness is real — maybe not the kind of monsters and creepy creatures we see on Stranger Things, but horrors no less. Things that break our hearts, leave our spirits wounded, and faith shaken and scarred.

In our work of recovery, we walk with people who have sat in the darkness, who have wrestled with monsters, and who have wondered “Where is God?”

As people who live not in the Upside-Down world of Stranger Things but in the in-between world of the resurrection and the coming again of Christ, the darkness can still haunt us. In this broken world, our words of comfort, our actions of compassion, and our lives of service point to a world that will once again be restored, monsters defeated, and darkness overcome.

As Revelation 2 says: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

And that is a show I can’t wait to see.

With you on the journey,

Chaplain Amy