Wednesday, September 11, 2019

“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’  So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order.  Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.” (Luke 11: 24 – 27, The Living Translation) 

Wasps – the horror sequel!

Last week, I told you about my battle with a frenzy of wasps which had made itself at home through a small niche in the brickwork near the front stoop. They had not read the fine print in their lease that they were supposed to leave humans alone and one stung me in the neck. I thought that I had sufficiently sprayed and sealed their entryway. Problem solved!

It turns out that wasps are not too keen on eviction notices, either. They have simply moved down the outer wall and are now using a new crevice to get into their nest somewhere in the garage. Moreover, where the first group of wasps were small but nasty, these wasps are bigger, heavy-duty dive bombers, foul tempered and stubbornly ill-willed. They won’t go away no matter how often I spray. I have another hole to seal.

I started the allegorical conversation that Sin is a lot like a nest of wasps which invade our personal space. It starts out with one or two but soon you have to deal with the constant presence of a swarm of sins lodging in your life and that, eventually, will get you stung. If you put off dealing with the negative issues, the bad attitudes, and crude behaviour which are messing up your life it will only get worse.

But Jesus reminds us through his parable as to how difficult it can be to rid ourselves of those offensive bits of life.  My wasps kept coming back to their old entryway and before long they figured out that  there was an other way in. Now I still have wasps and they’re bigger and worse and nastier than ever. Our sins can suddenly rear their ugly heads when we least expect and return to inflict their buzzing, stinging ways back into our lives. One sin is dealt with and seven take its place, right when we though everything was “all swept and in order.”

“Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.” Genesis 4:7, NLT)

It would have been helpful if Jesus had immediately given a 12-Step programme about how we might combat the return of sins in our lives, but he doesn’t. So we have to glean a strategy from other things he said at other times. I think one of the chief things he would recommend is for us to turn our energy into good works or what I prefer to call fruitfulness. We need to choose intentional, willful, deliberate acts to do and create goodness in our corners of the world.

The apostle Paul stated it this way, “And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That’s a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God…But you know better now, so make sure it’s all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.” (Colossians 3:5,8 The Message Bible)

That is not enough alone, so he adds, since we have been given a second chance, a rebirth, because of Jesus Christ, we need to choose to make the most of it.  “So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.” (Colossians 3: 12- 14, The Message Bible)

I am not sure that love is going to work with my wasps but I am sure and do believe that God’s Love for us and our Love for God and others can repair and seal our lives from harm.

Dale