Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8 NASB1995
With a can of Raid©, she meticulously sought out what was buzzing about.
Although I didn’t do it as much as I did with my paternal grandparents, I enjoyed traveling to the country and spending the night with my maternal grandparents. They lived in an old farmhouse surrounded by acres of woods and fields. They weren’t poor, but one would never have known it by their thrifty living. My grandfather was careful with how he spent his money. And one thing he didn’t spend it on was central air conditioning—or even air at all, unless you count the air that came through the screens of open windows.
Had they lived in a colder climate, I suppose the open windows would have brought relief during the summer months. But they lived in the lower sections of South Carolina, where the summers were sultry, and the mosquitoes were hungry. Open windows brought little relief, and electric fans—they did at least have those—only stirred up hot air and field dust.
I slept in what my grandmother called the “front room.” It was the first room on the right after entering the front door. The room was larger than rooms in many modern homes. It held two double beds, a piano, and other typical bedroom furniture—and still had room left over. My cousin, who lived only thirty yards down the path, often spent the night there as well. He slept in one bed, and I snuggled in the other.
Our nights, however, were often interrupted by buzzing. Before I fell asleep, I watched my grandmother make her rounds to each open window with her can of bug spray, spraying the screens, many of which had small holes. Mosquitoes in this area prowled like lions. The area even had a mosquito truck that made its weekly rounds. The smell drifting through the open windows was almost as powerful as the cotton dust the cropdusters sprayed over the cotton field across the road.
I don’t know how much my grandmother’s efforts accomplished, but they weren’t completely successful. Many a night, I fought the buzzing. I knew if it ever stopped, I would feel the sting and lose some blood in the process.
Peter speaks of another buzzing, but he calls it a roaring, like that of a lion on the prowl. Like the mosquito, our enemy buzzes about. He seeks to sting us with temptations that we’ll succumb to—temptations that, if given in to, will take us away from God’s will and God’s best for us.
But like my grandmother, God is actively working to put up a guard that will hinder his attempts. God won’t eliminate the temptations—just as my grandmother’s spray often didn’t kill all the mosquitoes or even prevent them from entering the holes in the screen. He will, though, provide the way of escape if we search for it.
God’s Spirit can do what my grandmother’s can of bug spray never did. With God’s seal residing in us, we can be successful over whatever sinful enticement that buzzes about us.
Trust God for power over whatever buzzes about you, enticing you to sin.
Fun memories. Great application.