For those of you who are familiar with Little Red, you'll understand what I'm about to share with you. For those of you who don't, let me clue you in just a little bit. To say that my bride is a bit particular about matters pertaining to the cleanliness of her house, would be somewhat of an understatement... sort of like... the Titanic was a pretty big boat. As a matter of fact, I've been in a LOT of hospitals that seem like filthy dumps compared to Little Red's standards of acceptable cleanliness. I wouldn't necessarily use the word "obsessive"... yeah I would... that's a pretty applicable word... I just wouldn't tell HER that.
Now earlier in the week, we weathered a bit of a crisis here at home. It's OK now... it's going to be fine. Let me explain. We were sitting in our living room one evening and my Little Woman looked down, and MUCH to her dismay, she saw a flea on her foot. Our poor dog, Esther, has been battling fleas all spring and summer. She gets bathed, dipped, powdered, dusted, medicated, and regularly picked to de-flea her. There's a fairly big empty lot behind our house and we surmised that the fleas were making their way over here to jump on our dog when she went outside to take care of her business. SO... in response, we've spent roughly 53% of the national debt on treatment for our yard.
And even though our little dog continued to get fleas, we vowed to continue the fight. But when Little Red looked down and saw one IN THE HOUSE... and it became evident that there were some fleas living in our carpet... I was afraid that I might lose her for a minute or two... not the dog... LOIS!!! Once I laid her down, fanned her, patted her hand, placed a damp wash rag on her forehead, and reassured her that I'd take care of it, her blood pressure began to fall back into the normal range. Pretty soon, she was back up on her feet and doing OK.
Bright and early the next day, I went and procured the necessary remedies. I got some more stuff for the yard... and put twice the recommended dosage on it. I bought some liquid spray that you have to wear an air tight rubber suit to open the container, and proceeded to spray roughly 4 times the recommended amount in all the right places. Then after that, I broke out the heavy artillery. I bought some of those foggers or bombs you set off in your house. You know... the kind that you have to seal up all the windows, turn everything electrical off, turn the gas off to the water heater BEFORE you set them off. The label said approximately one fogger per average sized room. My philosophy has always been, if a little does a little good, then a lot will do a lot of good. So I figured in my head and by the time I had strategically placed all the foggers, (about 3.7 per room), it took me about 5 minutes to get them all going. But I got 'em all foggin' and we left the premises for a few hours to let them do their thing.
Today, I'm proud to announce that there are no live fleas within 6.2 miles of our house. Our neighbors all thanked me for killing their bugs too. And Precious is doing very well now, thank you. Pesky little vermin are all taken care of.
I got to thinking about the similarities between those little pests and our enemy, the devil. He has no more power than they do. He can only "bother" us if we allow him. The only real tool he has at his disposal is deception... that's it... it's his only weapon. Fleas hide right there in plain sight... trying their best to blend in and hide so as not to be detected. Our enemy does the same thing... he tries his best to blend in so as not to be noticed, all the while irritating the dickens out of whoever will allow it... or put up with it.
But there's one cure that's more effective than anything you can buy at Home Depot. One good dose of the Holy Spirit and he's got to go. Just like the foggers completely fill a house with the remedy... the Holy Spirit will completely fill a life with the cure. So go ahead... set off a Holy Ghost bomb and just see if the irritation doesn't go away. Hey, it's Just A Thought.
Pastor Eddy
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