I've always been fascinated with ants. As a kid I read
about them and studied the ways they would organize and establish their
colonies. My favorite record was even called Antshillvania (click here for the show's introduction!). As a pastime I would entertain myself with ant gladiator
war games. I would fill a bus pan with water and place two large rocks in it so
that they both became islands. One rock was then loaded up with red ants and
the other with black ants. Taking a stir stick from my dad’s painting supplies
I then made a bridge between the rocks and watched them battle it out. The red
ants always won because they are designed for fighting. This made me create scenarios
to give the black ants a better edge. Let’s try two red ants against eight
black ants. Now who’s gonna win!? I was barbaric.
These battles were a metaphor for my parent’s
relationship before I started elementary school. I recall many evenings sitting
at the top of the stairwell listening to my parents yell at each other down in
the kitchen. It never got physical, but was quite verbal. And the threats of
divorce scared me.
The ants also got a little too close. Mom started hearing
a scratching noise in one of the walls of her bedroom. A mouse? A ghost? A
scratching in her head? Then mom saw a large ant crawl across her bedroom wall
and disappear into a small hole. Dad peeled back the dry wall around this hole
and found hundreds of ants crawling on top of each other. They called the
exterminators and when the drywall came down we saw that the entire wall had become
a large ant colony. It was really neat! You could see their tunnels and
chambers where they stored their eggs and food. But if this would have gone on much
longer, our roof would have caved in and destroyed the house, possibly putting someone’s
life in danger.
My dad designed this house himself and it was now being
destroyed by a nation of tiny ants. This was war! We sprayed. We poisoned. We
killed. We brought in the Special Forces. It was ant genocide. We kept no
prisoners. We showed no mercy. We even destroyed their young and unborn. And we
won the war!
The battle in my parents’ marriage wasn't as easy. There’s
no spray to kill the bugs that infest a marriage. But my parents were about to
meet someone who would change their marriage forever. The two of them were
invited to a sixteen week Bible study on Jesus
at a Lutheran church. Because of mom’s positive memories with the Lutheran
church they decided to attend. In these meetings my parents met Jesus and
committed their lives to him. Jesus started to change the way my parents spoke
to each other and he taught them how to love and forgive. Mom was also
introduced to James Dobson and claims that she “raised her boys on his
principles.” (So you can blame how I turned out on Dr. Dobson). We also started
to do family devotions and dad began praying with us each night before bed. We
never became a perfect family, but there was no longer any threat of our family
breaking up. Thus, the first thing I learned about Jesus was not informational,
but experiential. Jesus is the guy who saves! He doesn't just save “souls” from
bodies to take into heaven. (An idea I now utterly reject). He is saving all
creation, including all of us. We
will have new resurrected bodies and live forever in a new heaven and earth
where we will be reconciled with God, each other and creation.
Jesus saved my parents’ marriage and I started to fall in
love with this man who saves.
He was filled with joy
because he had come to believe in God – he and his whole family. (Acts 16:34b).
Tell us about something you had to fix in your house.
This week’s prompt for a story is not one of the easiest for me to follow.
ReplyDeleteIf I was going to write about bugs, it will undoubtedly be the shortest and most merciless story ever written. It would begin with “Kill them all!” and end with “Make sure you have killed them all” I just don’t like bugs.
But reading Pastor Stefano’s ants’ chapter I realized that it has to do with ants but also has to do with a little child working out his feelings, with the fixing of a house, the rescuing of a home and the amazing saving power of Jesus Christ.
What did I fix in my house? Will… the answer will be “the home” and really, I didn’t fix it, God did.
Imagine this: A young woman and a young man, both non Christians, both from different cultural backgrounds, both with different dreams. They decided to “fall in love” get married and build a home, not a building, but the place and the feeling that is a home.
Now imagine those two with only one year of marriage, leaving the familiar surroundings and planting their lives in a far away country, having to learn another language, adjust to yet another culture, meanwhile trying to keep the home and the marriage together!
Imagine, every thing coming undone, the bitter quarrels, slowly sinking in to a pool of silence. An unforgiving spirit throwing them against each other in a battle where there were not winners.
The home destroyed…
And then imagine this: An encounter with Jesus, God steps in to the rubbles of that home, picks up these two lost souls and begins to heal their lives, change their heart and give them hope.
From the miss they have made, from the huge pile of garbage were all seemed to have disappeared, God rescues their marriage and begins to rebuild the home on the foundation of faith and with Jesus as the center pillar.
Forty-one year later praises rise from the place once broken.
Their home is not entirely without flaws but is a Christian home.
Their lives are no perfect but they belong to the Perfect One, the Lord Jesus. (For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.) Philippians 2:13
Yes, their lives are a work in progress But the One who is working in their lives knows very well what he is doing. He is the “fixer” of lives and the builder of solid homes.
I am so glad I didn't have to write about bugs!
Thank-you so much for taking the time to share this testimony of God's saving power with us. I found it a blessing to read. Praise God!
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