Our 12-foot fold-down trailer has a small sink and some running water, but this is as close as it comes to having the amenities of home. As a result, we must frequent the camp bathrooms when we travel. This translates to having to deal with bugs, for there are always bugs in camp bathhouses…
Take the ladies’ room, for example, at the RV Park where we stayed near Inverness, Nova Scotia. It was literally overrun with crane flies–that huge bug that looks like a monstrous mosquito.
Fortunately, I’m not particularly squeamish when it comes to bugs in a public bath facility, for I’ve learned that if I leave them alone, they will reciprocate the kindness. I tend to have a completely different attitude, however, when they enter my living quarters, and when a stray crane fly managed to make its way into my trailer, it was all out war.
Isn’t it funny how my mind differentiates between public bathhouses and my personal living quarters…
As I think about this, it occurs to me that this is a great example of how we, as Christians, should live our lives. We are in the world, we are surrounded by the fruit of the devil’s work; yet we are told: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2 NLT).
In other words, in the same way I don’t tolerate bugs in my trailer, we are not to let the “bugs” of sin–worldly customs, temptation, addiction, etc.–into our lives. Rather, we are to let God transform us–change the way we think–so that our lives are free of the devil’s “bugs”.
This doesn’t mean that we must isolate ourselves from the world. Just like I had no choice but to share my bathroom stall with a couple of crane flies, we do live in the world, and we need to accept those we live among for who and what they are. What we must guard against is letting that worldliness creep into our own hearts.
I am not saying we don’t have a responsibility to the world. Jesus’ last great commission is to take the freedom of Salvation to all people in the world (SeeMatt. 28:18-20). What I am saying is that we must not become like the world. We are called to love and support those who are of the world, and to do that, we must do whatever we can to introduce them to “the exterminator”, Jesus Christ; but we are called to: “Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.” (Phil. 2:15 NLT).
What does this mean?
It means that when we see a few of the devil’s “crane flies” in the people of the world around us, we must love and support them, and above all, we must try to point them to the great “crane fly exterminator”. Whatever we do, however, we are not to let those same “crane flies” of sin and worldliness into our own hearts.
In His love,
Lyn
Lynona Gordon Chaffart, Speech-Language Pathologist, mother of two, Author — “Aboard God’s Train — A Journey With God Through the Valley of Cancer”, Author and Moderator for The Nugget, a tri-weekly internet newsletter, andScriptural Nuggets, a website devoted to Christian devotionals and inspirational poems, withAnswers2Prayer Ministries. Follow Lyn on Twitter @lynchaffart.
(To access the entire “Lessons From Cape Breton” mini-series, please click here.)