With the joys of springtime (rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb) comes the harsher realities of the fall and the dark effect it has had on both man and beast. And critter. Nature, while lovely, carries with it a blot. That blot is spiders. Not just spiders, because we are all in favor of having wee pestilences consumed, drained to a mere shell of themselves by the powerful jaws of the arachnid, but entitled spiders. Spiders who do not remain satisfied with the myriad bushes and flowers we have offered them as apartment complexes (running water and all), but are drawn by the siren song of an open window or a crack beneath a door and go to find their fortunes where no spider hath yet succeeded.
That’s right: a spider literally raced across my pillow WHILE I WAS STILL USING IT.
I have known folks who would procure a lightly-used square of card stock and wiggle it gently beneath the poor misguided multi-footed creature and then, after carrying him outside, would relocate him to the nearest thriving rhododendron, where, presumably, he would live out his days in humble gratitude for his life having been spared (he probably absorbed a lot of Androcles and the Lion as a wee tot at his mother’s knees) by fastidiously ridding the yard of all unwelcome pests and never again darkening a pillow not his own.
We are not those folks.
We are the sort of folks who, when the privacy of the ancestral is invaded by rodents or pests, like not only to kill them, but for it to be slow and painful enough that they have time to take stock of their misspent lives and try for a bit of remorse. Or, at the very least, to spit out some creative animal kingdom swearing, which I assume has a lot to do with lacewings and Tishbites. Possibly, my husband, being a horticulturist, if left to his own devices would choose more swift (some of you are thinking “humane” and you are thinking it really loud, could you stop?) death, but he is more than just a horticulturist. He is a very kind husband.
So when we had trouble with cockroaches, he sprayed them in such a way that their nerves seized and they died horrible crippled deaths after scurrying across the infant bassinet WHILE THE INFANT WAS IN IT. It was deeply satisfying to watch the cockroaches attempt to pull themselves along with only their front legs, their back legs having died, and then failing miserably. Ha!
And when mice decided that living their best life included making a nest underneath a toddler’s pull out trundle using her bedding, we didn’t just set traps. We set out the good stuff that causes them to bleed internally, unstoppably, and then get pinned by sticky traps, lest they refuse to accept such an obvious invitation to stop and consider. Double ha!
But I didn’t know my husband’s skills as a mass murderer of beasties could rise still further in my estimation until this morning, when one such entitled spider took it into its pea-brain to saunter into my bedroom and attempt to take up residence in a fan that was not in use. At first, I failed to mentally connect the dots of what the Baboo was doing when he lifted the box fan off the ground and held it up to eye level, and then turned it on high, facing away from him. And then he blew one solitary, but mighty, puff of air —
He literally pushed a spider through an electric fan. I was so inspired, I nearly wept.
Go and do likewise, Reader.
Today, you and I have gross, black, fuzzy sins that we are treating like house guests, allowing them to run rampant across the pillows of our marriage beds and to perch in our parenting. KILL THEM. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword (sharper than the most vicious box fan); hold up the Word to your pet sins of ingratitude and anger, of lust and laziness, of gossip and dishonesty, and seek the very Breath, the Spirit of God to propel it irrevocably forward. Not sure where to find these sins? This Word doubles as a flashlight. Be so consumed with the Word of God that you are able to see the cracks where you have allowed sin to creep in and set up housekeeping. Jesus is Lord, must be Lord, in all the nooks and crannies of your heart and your life and He does not share space with the pestilence of sin. Kill it. Kill it dead NOW.
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