The flowers are blooming bees are buzzing, birds are flying higher; this is spring. Spring has always been one of my favorite seasons because of its new life, color, and growth. This season I feel like God is growing me just like the spring is developing. A new season of my life is that is going to help me understand more of who I am, and who God is to me.
So let me just start off by saying I HATE WASPS! I hate them with a deep passion! I do not believe that there is a part of me that could ever learn to love a wasp or at least like them! So I decided to find out a little more on these skeletal nightmares of mine. Through Wikipedia.com (don’t hate me and please correct me if I am wrong) I learned that…
1. Wasps can vary in color between dark yellows, to brown and dark black.
2. These wasps have little to no hair.
3. They have two long legs that are visible hanging down while in flight.
4. They do not have pollen baskets.
5. Two out of four insects from the wasp family are aggressive. The Yellow Jacket, and The Bald-faced Hornet.
6. The Paper Wasp, and the Hornet (European hornet) are gentler.
7. The Paper Wasps are the ones that hang out around my college campus eat other insects for food.
8. CAN STING!
9. The sting pain is rated at a 3.0 for a Paper Wasp!!!! (ouch)
10. The paper wasp is not attracted to light at all.
11. They make homes out of small umbrella-shaped papery combs hanging horizontally in protected spaces such as attics, leaves, or soil cavities.
I am not going to say that knowing more about these little torments makes me dislike them less. It just makes me know that I do not want to get in a tussle with these 3.0 sting pain rate insects! That is for sure!
As Christians shouldn’t we also view sin the same way we view our air born terrors? We should yell out and feel as strongly about hating sin as we do bees or wasps! There are three things that come to mind when I think of a wasp; the wasp is sneaky, the wasp will eventually sting, and the wasp can be uncontrollable.
My most recent encounter with a wasp was the other day as I went to buy some coffee from a local coffee house, on my way back to the car a wasp gently lands on the top of my coffee can. Well, needless to say I freaked out and dropped my coffee can on to the ground. As the wasp then crawled out from under the metal can heavy from the fullness of the ground up coffee beans, a man walked up from behind me and stepped on the intruding insect, thus saving me from this potentially angry wasp! You can imagine I was quite thankful for the man, and that my full can of coffee did not spill out all over the sidewalk.
Sometimes like the wasp in my story, sin can be sneaky. Flying in unannounced and landing on us. Our sneaky little wasp (Satan) whispers in our ears, “oh this one little lie won’t hurt anyone,” or “Just take it, the cashier won’t even notice or care,” or “Just take one little sip.” Then Wham Pow we are stung!
One little sin can start out like a small sting, then the sting can turn to an itch, then to a rash and by this point an all out infection. From the Message Bible in Romans 5:12 it says, “You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in–first sin, then death, and no one is exempt from either sin or death.” I know that this verse seems pretty unpleasant, but there is hope! Just like the man who came from behind me in the story to save me from my wasp encounter, Jesus came for us and stepped on sin by dying on the cross and taking our punishment for sin upon himself! All we have to do is Confess what we have done wrong, Ask God to forgive, and He WILL!!
I guess there is something to learned from the wasp!
