HOW BEAUTIFUL...

Yes, how beautiful, the first roses of spring in my yard. Each a unique creation, with delicately painted petals that display water droplets like diamonds.

I guess I'm in a poetic mood this morning, surveying the flowers and grass, noticing the gray sky will probably provide the “watering” today instead of my yard hoses. I've lived or worked earlier in life in what would be called the “concrete jungles”--the packed together office buildings, crowded sidewalks and congested, grimy streets. Now, I'm grateful for dirt and grass...and flowers.

It's not perfect. Vermin—rats--have dug under my house and I'm diligently trying to get rid of them. Yes, it was unnerving to realize this—when I heard “skittering” in the hall ceiling and then a stampede up the wall between the bathroom tub and kitchen sink. The battle of “bad bait” began. It seems to be working.

For all the decades I've lived in this small city, this is my first big experience with the “yucks” of rodents. At one time, there was a huge vacant lot behind my home. No doubt “critters” abundantly homesteaded there. Our cat nabbed a few! Then the land was bulldozed to put in stacks of townhouses. Guess where the disturbed vermin migrated.....

Yes, I sense a lesson in this. How we want our lives perfect, free of care and danger that “chew” at our well-being and leave emotional debris behind. But we live in a word tainted by sin and people who chew at what we value: our “person-hood” and self esteem, our safety, our hope. We want full “eradication” of such spiritual enemies. It's in the Divine Plan—but not yet. Only in the perfect spiritual timeline when Jesus returns to reign.

From time to time, science and photography provide us with breathtaking photos of our home planet, like these: photos of earth from space - Search Such views were unimaginable to people among whom Jesus lived during His earth-time, eking out a living in a mostly-barren landscape.

Our globe still has places where few can live: deserts, dangerous swamps, and places destroyed by war.

But we still have places where we can plant beauty. Not just flowers and crops (ever marveled at the wind pushing waves across a field of grain?), but the everyday living of kind words and actions. Refusing to let the “vermin” of ill will or unrealistic expectations spoil the possibility of peace and harmony. And then—how beautiful, the family of God.

Listen to Twila Paris sing “How Beautiful” here in a 2011 recording (skip through the first unrelated ads):

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UNDERCOVER WORK

 “Oh, rats!” In my childhood, anything remotely sounding like a curse abusing God's name was thoroughly discouraged. I think we got away with “Fiddlesticks” (even though it denigrated my future music passion), “Bummer!” or “Rats!” All of which I could have recalled (though refrained from reviving) for a recent household emergency—with the exception of the last. Because watching television isn't my “thing,” my evenings are quiet, often spent reading. So when I heard thumps and bumps and clattering in the ceiling—and there was no chance of the fabled Santa Claus and his four-footed flying helpers being the reason—I knew I had a problem.

Rats roam the neighborhood, probably still insulted that their wonderful Rat City (huge vacant lot behind the fences of homes on my street) was disturbed and banned when developers put up a huge neighborhood of townhouses on the site. Do rats have scouting parties that work in the dark? And how would they get in my attic to have nighttime square-dancing contests that scared me spit-less (more or less)?

Sharing my plight with some friends, we decided the rats had looked for a back door to success—in my case, a tiny chewed-away part of the wood frame of the screened “plug” to my foundation well access. Once under the house, party time! And somehow, the party moved upstairs through walls to my attic. A caring friend came over with eradication supplies (spell that e-RAT-ication) and helped me with the dastardly task. Another brought a bent piece of metal to cover the tiny suspected-chewed entry of the screen's wooden frame. A couple weeks later, the unwelcome clatter faded. I heard a tiny ceiling chunk-e-dunk a couple nights ago, but not the full-fledged square-dancing-romps of previous weeks.

As I considered the tiny access making way for a vermin celebration, I thought of how sin can be just as sneaky. Give sin an inch, and it chews away at a one's character:

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. (Ephesians 5:11)

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14)

This is the message we have heard from Him and announced to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. (1 John 1:5-6)

Disclaimer: I'm not pointing any fingers in writing about this problem. Any Christian faces the threat of spiritual “rats”: “Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33). We don't have to turn up at unsavory places in person. Pushing the “on” button on a computer can take someone to virtual bad places as well. The more someone spends time in such negative places, the more it can erode one's character.

Oddly, mice and rats have been gentrified (made “normal”) through the pens and brushes of cartoonists. Remember the mice who helped Cinderella get ready for her life-changing ball? Or the comic critters with big ears, long tails and vicious dental work who starred in Disney's 2007 cartoon “Ratatouille”? Sorry, not the real world. My unwelcome visitors didn't have names, except maybe “Ugh.” Eradication, not entertaining them, was my aim. Hmm, sounds like spiritual warfare for believers, too....