Who knew that looking at a big ugly bug crawling around in the bottom of my kitchen sink would give me pause for reflection into my own life?
It was a bug. What was there to think about? Normally, I don’t have to think long when I see a bug of any kind. The question usually is as simple as, “Where is the nearest shoe?” Whereas snakes and birds may have me running the other way…bugs don’t tend to scare me very much. They’re creepy and they get on my nerves, but squishing a bug doesn’t usually faze me. Well, except for the crunch. Ick. I’m not a big fan of the crunch.
Anyway, there it was scratching its eight or twelve or thirty little bug legs (I didn’t stop to count), trying with all of its might to find a way out of the bottom of my slippery, wet sink. While the question may have normally been, “Where is the nearest shoe?” I wasn’t too keen on taking off my flip-flop and putting it into the bottom of the sink to squish the bug.
Therefore, I resorted to Plan B, which of course in the case of an ugly bug in the sink means: Run Water Over the Bug.
If you’ve ever run water over a bug, you will learn that a bug is quite unusually determined. It will put all of its eight or twelve or thirty legs to work at the same time, scratching as frantically as it can in the opposite direction of the flow of the water. And about the time you think you have surely captured the bug in the flow of the water and killed it, you will turn off the water and see that the bug was hardly fazed at all. It will, in fact, blink and sputter a time or two, then begin to crawl around again as if it only just experienced a lovely refreshing shower…not a near death experience.
You will then resort to Plan C which is to turn on the steaming hot water to kill the bug. Again, the bug will only act as if it just experienced a delightful dip in the hot tub at a spa resort.
You can try scooping the bug up into a cup of water. It will go for a swim. You can try pushing it down the drain. It will come up for more like it just went down a cool water slide.
Nothing you can do will drown the bug.
There is only one thing you can do to get rid of the bug. You have to squish its guts out.
Lovely to think about isn’t it?
The moral of this story is a simple one: If you have sin or strife in your life, you can not merely “run water over it” and try to get rid of it. Taking the easy way out will not result in cleaning up your life. Running water over it will only temporarily fix the issue, making it appear as if it is gone…but it will quickly resurface itself the moment the water is turned off.
If you have a sin in your life, you have to squish it. You have to hear the crunch. It will likely hurt.
But then it will be gone. And you can clean up the guts that are splattered all over the place then fill that void in your life with something healthy, whole and good.
Yes indeed. Who knew you could learn so much from a bug?