attack of the centipedes!

February 2, 2003

a few weeks ago, i was sitting in my room doing homework on the computer (as usual) and i noticed that a centipede was crawling up my wall. so i did what any normal mature young adult would do: i ran out of my room and asked mommy to rid the centipede from my room. (not exactly your "tough" guy approach, huh?)

so that was that and i continued working. later on that day, i noticed that yet ANOTHER centipede was crawling up the same wall. so i repeated what i did previously and got my mom to fix the problem.

you'd think that'd be it for the crazy centipedes climbing up my wall? i mean two is quite enough! but, it didn't stop there. a THIRD centipede starting crawling up the exact same wall by nightfall. this time there wasn't anyone home to rescue me.

by this time, i decided that some kind of infestation (GROSS!) had taken place in my room. so i grabbed the vacuum cleaner and much to my disgust began vacuuming my room all over. i think i must have found about 10-20 centipedes (either dead or alive) that were on the carpet of my room. i went outside of my room and noticed that there were centipedes on the landing of the basement to enter my room.

the next day, i was pretty content that i had eliminated this centipede problem. by now, i had a good eye for looking at the ground before i walked around because i didn't want to step on any of the little guys. and lo and behold, more of them were STILL walking around. so i got the vacuum cleaner yet again.

everytime i got rid of one, one would seem to pop up from somewhere else and i'd go get the vacuum cleaner. my attempts for elimination the infestation were purely in vain. unless i had eliminated the ROOT of where these guys were coming from, they'd keep coming!

i recently watched a message from louie (722) before all this craziness that was entitled "one thing". and he had an illustration about the sin in our lives by using an analogy of weeds. you can keep chopping weeds all you like, but whatever you do they'll keep popping back up unless you get rid of the ROOT. and for us, we can try to do all these things to get rid of maybe that "one sin" that keeps making us fall. but try all we like, it'll keep popping back up because we don't know what the root of the problem is. we can do all these things to try and prevent it, but it won't work. only God knows the root of our problems. only God knows JUST how deep they run. some of these might have deeper roots than others.

and so, i felt that this centipede problem i was having very closely paralleled that idea that louie presented. unless i knew where they were coming from, i could get rid of the ones i saw all i liked, but they'd still keep coming. it was only unless i found the root that i could eliminate the entire problem altogether! and so the application is the same. only God knows the root, and only God knows how to get rid of the problem. there is hope! we have to fix our eyes on Jesus.

"fix your eyes on God, He'll change you from the inside out" (romans 12:2 [the message])

Posted by Leo Chan at February 2, 2003 2:07 PM