A friend came by and showed me his arm. He had been stung by a wasp and as a result, his arm was painfully swollen. Wasps are common down here in the Deep South during the summer, and rare is the case of a resident of the area making it through the season without a sting or two. They are wretched little creatures, and the mere sight of one in close proximity to me will cause me to ‘saturate the area with my absence’.
Almost as if on cue, when I think of wasps I am always reminded of one of the times my brother was stung when we were little. I must have been nine years old or so, which would have made him very close to the tender age of six. We spent those endless summers back then playing in the woods and around a small pond; building forts out of old, abandoned cars and trucks that my dad had collected for parts as he pursued his hobby of rebuilding antique vehicles. Wasps absolutely thrive in that environment. It was my fault he was a victim that day, but I’m not going to take all of the blame for it.
Our preacher had used animals as an analogy during his sermon the Sunday before, and though I remember nothing of the sermon (I was nine!), I’ll never forget his example. He said that animals can sense fear in humans, which is scientifically correct I later learned as I grew older. My brother and I had discovered a huge wasp nest in an old car, and I decided, for whatever reasoning a nine-year-old mind contemplates, that the nest had to go. And in so doing, I decided to put the preacher’s words to the test. I told my brother that as long as he showed no fear, the wasps would leave him alone. Convinced by me, he grabbed a brick. And with a banshee chant of ‘I hate you wasps!” (and no fear), he tossed the brick directly into the midst of the swarming hordes.
We ran for our very lives, a cloud of furious wasps in hot pursuit.
I escaped unscathed, but my brother took a hit right above his mouth. He cried a little bit, but within a few minutes we were back down at the pond going about our business of playing war with our toy soldiers. That’s when I noticed his mouth. It had swollen up and out, very closely resembling something you would see on a duck’s face. I knew right then and there that mom was going to kill me. I needed to do something fast! Because I had seen it in a movie, I smeared mud on the bite and the swelling went down a little, but not enough and eventually we had to go home. Yes, I did get in not a little bit of trouble over the major part I had played in the incident.
Life is messy, and we are going to get stung by it sooner rather than later. Sin will track us down (it knows where we live) and cause us to stumble or even fall. It will ruin our lives if we allow it to fester, unhindered and unchecked by the forgiveness that is readily available to us from God through His infinite grace. We can’t simply go on about our business and ignore it, pretending that it never happened. We can’t try and cover it up with good deeds or actions. Sin is something that must be dealt with.
John tells us that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I like that a lot! God is there, ever present and ever mindful of the things we do, and yet He is faithfully waiting to forgive us. That is part of it, but I also like the part about ‘cleansing us’. That feeling of being spiritually clean is hard to beat when we find we’ve made a shamble of things in our lives.
I don’t mess around with wasps anymore. The risks are dangerous and the consequences of a painful sting are not worth it. But it’s good to know I have Benadryl and an old Tung-nut tree handy just in case I do happen to get stung. But better still, it’s also wonderful to know that God is there, faithful and true, waiting to forgive and cleanse should sin happen to find me and cause me to fall.
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