maggots

Maggots are the one life form this peace-loving person despises. They are a personal affront to my sensibilities and cleanliness, an insult to my eyes, repulsive, unfit to exist, irritating, annoying, irredeemable. Once in a garbage can they can only be drowned by the hose and removed until not a trace exists. The problem with this is that maggots are an effect, not a cause. Every little swiggly, squirmy piece of crawling snot can be rinsed away, but they will reappear in force in a very short time if the source which generates them is not also dealt with. I hate them with a passion but they exist for a reason and do have a function. Suffice it to say I just came in from rinsing, yet AGAIN, our infested garbage can and bags.

This turned out to be an object lesson for me, which made me angrier about the whole thing, yet forcefully presented a truth and a process in my own life. Oftentimes we tend to hang on to things in our lives way past their expiration date. We hold onto pet areas of service, relationships that are unhealthy, ways of living that used to be acceptable but are no more. Most people do not like to face death, and the idea of decay is positively brutal to our mortal minds. Just watch an episode of CSI. That brings mortality way too close to reality for me. The ugly results of decay tend to show up in life when we don't listen to the voice of the Spirit telling us "you're done here", or "change". I know I kick, I scream, I make shrines out of things until the maggots begin to show up, and the whole world can see how repulsive my selfish and inappropriate behaviors really are, dressed up in good things, like a corpse in her Sunday best.
I can only imagine how God must feel about my deadness.

I pray today that I can do more than be disgusted by those little critters which are evidence of serious decay in my life. I will allow myself to be cleaned out and sprayed until the source is gone.