Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Uninvited visitors

For several weeks now we have lived with uninvited visitors in our home. They haven't come in through the front door, but they have moved in. We are most aware of their presence early in the morning as we are awakened from sleep by a gnawing sound in the wall above our bed or the scurry of little feet above us. Our guests have rudely disturbed our sleep on several occasions. Our visitors are uninvited and unwanted, but we have no idea who they are. Rats? Squirrels? Raccoons? We still don't know.


Finally, with no other resort, we called our local "pest" control specialists. A really nice man came to our home and within an hour had set out a series of traps that he said would take care of our problem.


I'm awake early this morning and have been listening for our unwanted visitors, but have heard nothing. With one simple visit our pest control specialist has resolved our problem and it appears our uninvited guests have gone.


I can't help but think about this in terms that make it an illustration for my life. It's even more vivid for me because I'm in the middle of teaching through the book of Revelation. I'm not sure how to label our visitors, whether it is called sin, Satan or something else I am glad that we called a specialist who knew what to do about our problem.


This, very simply, is the message of the gospel. Having become "infested" with the pest of a sin nature that is eating away at our lives and keeping us awake at all hours, we have invited one who can solve our problem and turned our "house" over to him to fix our infestation. Doing what we cannot he has provided us with the peace we long for. I know, it's a huge reach, but I'm awake and it's 3:30 in the morning.....it's just a few of the crazy thoughts racing through my mind.


The interesting thing to me were the words of our specialist when he told us, "I can't see how they got in, but they are here!" Isn't that the way it is with all the junk of our lives? We don't always know how we got here, but here we are. Now we need help to fix our problem. I'm glad God is always available to come over and help me with my "pest" problems.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad they are gone!

Mike Messerli said...

Well, we have found our visitor. I got up this morning to discover a "10 pound" rat laying dead at our bedroom door. He had eaten the bait the pest control company had put out, and had died from it. I have no idea how a rat that big gets into a home, but he did....and I'm glad he is gone....just in case you were wondering.