I don’t know about you but for us this year has been a year of mice. Maybe once or twice a year we may have trouble with mice. Maybe someone has left the door open or somehow they have found their way in. But this year has been unbelievable. I know I have talked to others that are having trouble as well this year.
This is when you really wish you had a cat. We do have dogs and we have one that will hunt them out and catch them if he can. He has caught two this year. But cats are more natural at catching them. Our problem is that we cannot have an inside cat due to allergies. And if we have one outside they don’t last long before the coyotes get them.
So we have been doing our best to keep traps in place every night. Some are very smart and are able to get the peanut butter off without getting caught. Still, others get the peanut butter off of one or two traps but the third one gets them. And still, others don’t make it passed the first trap.
Now in this part of the story, you may not want to be eating because it can definitely take your appetite away. You can’t say I did not warn you.
Probably two months ago we started to smell a dead mouse. It was in the corner of our kitchen. We figured it was a nest of babies somewhere behind the cabinets or in the wall that had died after we trapped their mom. Whatever the case it stunk terribly but there was nothing we could do. We searched the area and could not find anything.
As time passed the stench got less and less. Here a few days ago my daughter came and said, “Mom, it looks like there is a leg of a mouse under the toaster.” As I investigated, sure enough, it looked like a leg. I shared with my husband and he took the toast out and was trying to see if he could take it apart to see if there was a mouse in it somewhere. As he was looking at things he could see the tail of the mouse. It is a well-designed commercial toaster and he couldn’t figure out how to take it apart to get the mouse out. It is going to take wisdom from the designer to know how to get it out.
Apparently what happened is this mouse found a way to get into a portion of the toaster and got electrocuted. It was not in the area where you put the toast. So every time we would toast some bread he was getting heated up and it stank. We did, at one point, clean out the toaster because there was a lot of burnt rice cake in there and we were thinking that it might be the burnt rice cakes that we were smelling. But it did not help. So then we thought the smell was a dead mouse in the wall. Needless to say, now that we know, no one wants to use the toaster. And in the mean time, we are still working on how to clean it out.
This made me think of our Christian lives. We may have a dead “mouse” in the recesses of our lives. It is buried deep within. We don’t want people to know about it and we try to keep it hidden. But it is stinking. It may be stinking by coming out in anger, critical attitudes toward others, or in many other ways. The problem is we can’t figure out how to get into the mechanics of our “toaster”, heart. We can see it but can’t figure out how to get to it and get it removed. Here are some things that can help us.
- First be honest with yourself. Too many times we don’t really want to look to see what the “smell” is all about. If we don’t look maybe it will go away. But what it does is destroys our lives.
- Second, submit yourself to God. We must first choose to place ourselves completely under God’s authority and control. We struggle with this because we want full control. Here is the problem, there are only two powers and if we are not allowing God to control the devil has full reign.
- Resist the devil. There are two things the devil likes to do about those dead smelly things that we have buried in the recesses of our hearts. He likes to tell us that we are too bad to be to come to God. But this is a lie. He also wants to tell us that the deadly things are not that big of a deal. We need to resist the devil and the things that he tells us. We can resist Satan by using the powerful sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
- Draw nigh to God. God wants our intimate fellowship with Him through prayer.
- Cleanse your hands. We must confess and forsake all known sin in our lives.
- Purify your heart. This comes as we fill our hearts with God’s Word and allow His Holy Spirit to freely remove anything in our lives that is not of God.
Dear Father,
Give us Your grace to overcome. Thank You for Your love, even when we stink. Help us to look honestly at ourselves and let You have full control.
In Jesus Name,
Amen
No matter what you have done in your life God will accept you as you come to Him. Give all to Him today.
Love you all.
Do you have a mouse story? I would love to hear it.