It's enough to drive you insane when bugs are biting you inside the house. We have screens on our windows, we've calked cracks in our walls and stuffed our floor cracks with the fabric used down here to pound into the cracks in boats. Still, the bugs somehow find a way to weasel their way in.
Mosquitoes must have the hardest time. They have to find big enough hidden holes and cracks somewhere. But there are tiny greenish yellow, almost grasshopper-looking, flying bugs that get in more easily through the screens and swarm around our lights on the nights that the mosquitoes are off duty.
They take turns. Some nights there are hardly any bugs. On others, the yellow flying bugs hover in a swarm, covering the floor in a circle under the light where they drop in expiration. The other nights are mosquito nights, where we live with a light under our supper table to discourage them from hiding there and piercing our innocent legs and feet (which we've started keeping covered in nylon pants and socks even in the house to keep down the biting). On those nights, the evening entertainment is zapping as many of those beasts with our new handy dandy plug-in bug zapper that Brian "happened" to find in our base town just before our move to the village.
Then for the day shift, there are black biting bugs that come in three sizes. The biggest ones are the size of this capital "D." Then there are ones that are half that size. Then the smallest ones are only about the size of a period, but you can feel a bite on your leg and look down and see the tiny dot of a bug. The latter two tiny bugs easily get in, especially through the floor cracks.
These dot bugs are what I was complaining about. Brian says that this place would be a paradise on earth if it weren't for the bugs. During my little conversation I was having with the Lord, it dawned on me that this, these biting bugs, are part of the curse of a broken and sinful, pain-filled world.
We've been thinking about that quite a bit recently, having a three-year-old who wants to know "why" about everything. Sometimes it makes you really think, re-thinking through everything you know in order to explain it. Where did everything come from? Why are there owie things? Why are people sometimes bad and mean? Why do people die?
It's because of sin. God created a perfect world, but sin tainted it. Our world is broken and filled with pain. Things get dirty, stuff wears out, there is pain, people die.
But that's not the end of the story. There is redemption. God sent His perfect Son, Jesus, to die a painful death on our behalf and pay the penalty for our sins. Then God raised Him from the dead, showing that He accepted that payment for our sin, and showing that sin and death were beaten. Our part is to believe. This is what we talk about with our boy, and this is why we're here among the Maki. We want to one day be able to share this message of redemption in their language. It is our hope that they will understand and believe.
As I stood there, those thoughts ran through my head in a split second. God showed me that I can view these bugs as a reminder of why we're here where these bugs are, and as a reminder that this world is broken. It is not really our home. It's not the end.
Brokenness, pain, sadness, death, separation and goodbyes, and things like dirt and annoying bugs, all of this should point us to Heaven. It should make us long for our true home. And when we remember our hope, our redemption, it should make us overflow with thankfulness and joy. And this thankfulness and joy should compel us to want to share this message with any and all who will listen.
Don't get me wrong. I haven't won in this area yet. I am just now realizing and learning these things. But my prayer, is that each time I am driven crazy by bugs, or I am laying in bed at night scratching my itching, itching feet, that God will help me instead of complaining, to pray for the people we have come to try to reach. This, I think, is the way I can be thankful for bugs.