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Bitten by a wasp

That morning, I had been out running and while I was running, I was deep in thought. Running can be somewhat of a brain dead activity. It’s a great opportunity to ponder and I frequently do get in a lot of good pondering. I had reflected how it was so difficult to be the kind of man I truly wanted to be.

While I was thinking, a new meaning of the scriptural phrase,  “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came to me. How can I personally lay hold on the character of Christ and be the man I truly want to be when the physical natural man is so much more powerful than I want?

Well, I finished the run, showered, ate breakfast and started my work day. Now, one of my goals for the day was to lay some shingles on our not so little roof. I’ve been working on that. I had been working on that for months myself. My son-in-law is chipping away at it a little at a time.

Well, I slipped into my coveralls and climbed up on the roof. I was in the middle of nailing down some shingles when I felt a stinging pain in my lower back. I stood up abruptly and reached back just below my right kidney. Rather than diminish the pain, it was intensifying. It hurt. I slipped out of my coveralls and went into the house. Examination of the injured site displayed the typical marks for some kind of a sting.

My wife and I applied some minor first aid and I went back out on the roof. As I went to where I’d dropped my coveralls, there I found the culprit. It was a wasp. Well, thinking no more of it, I went back to work but within minutes, I noticed that my heart began to race. I started getting sweaty, lightheaded and I was weak and nauseated. Growing more so by the minute, I managed to get down the ladder and back into the house and the next several hours were a blur.

My wife looked up treatment ideas on the internet and went to work on me — pills, ice packs, etc. Finally, sometime in the early afternoon, whatever it was, wore off. Anaphylactic shock or the lesser part of it. I was able to get up and go back to work.

When it was over, I felt like I had taken a few really hard punches. I remember through this whole ordeal, especially at the beginning, thinking it was just a tiny little wasp,  get up, go back to work, it’s all in your head but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength to punch my way out of a wet paper bag and as I lay there, it hit me.

Whether in spiritual or physical things, it’s the little things that get you. Often, it’s the little choices we make each day that form the little habits that make all the difference at the end of the day and I reflected back on my run that morning.

If I want to be like my Savior and enjoy his presence, his peace, his power and his joy, then it is the little decisions each day I have to watch more carefully and by the way this happened this morning so if I am a little bit punchy with the devotional tonight, well that’s why. I had a bit of a rough morning and a bit of a rough afternoon.