“There he goes!” screamed grandma as she lifted her feet high in the air.  We were sitting on the patio, enjoying our breakfast when a tiny mouse ran by our feet.  He was running as fast as the wind!  We didn’t see him for the rest of the day…he was in hiding.  “I think we scared him more than he scared us!” I said, with a chuckle.

We didn’t see hide nor hair of him for days.  Then one day, as I sat on the patio, deep in thought, he stuck his wee head out the side door of the garage.  Our eyes locked, and we stared at each other for some time.  He was the cutest, tiniest, little creature I had ever seen.  He was dark brown, and had two shiny black eyes that never seemed to blink.  All by himself, he seemed so insignificant and harmless; but, my husband saw him and said we needed to get rid of him.

 

He filled two mouse traps out with cheese, and set them in two different places, hoping to catch him. That mouse was just a baby!  He was so tiny…it just didn’t seem right to me to take his life; after all, he was just trying to survive like the rest of us.  I smiled silently to myself when I awoke the next morning and the cheese was gone from both traps, and the mouse had not been caught.  I was happy for him!  He’d had a good meal, and not lost his life over it!

 

I was soon to change my mind, for it wasn’t long before I began to notice more mice.  I wasn’t sure if mice were like people and told their friends about the nice neighborhood they had found; but he must have put the word out somehow, because they were everywhere…going in and out of my garage!  The new arrivals weren’t cute and small either!  They were rather disgusting to look at…and twice as big!

 

What had started out as amusing and harmless, was now ugly and destructive!  You could hear them in the garage chewing everything to shreds.  They were too smart for the traps we had set, and they were multiplying quickly.  It was time for more aggressive measures…it was time for D-Con! I could still see that tiny baby mouse staring at me with his cute little whiskers and un-blinking black eyes.  I felt really bad that I was going to have to end his stay…but he wasn’t alone in the garage anymore.  He’d brought his big, ugly friends with him, and they were destroying everything we had.

 

Sin is kind of like that small, insignificant mouse.  At first, it seems harmless…tiny.  You think to yourself, it’s just small…it really isn’t THAT bad; besides, my heart is big, and there’s plenty of room for it.  It won’t get in the way or be a bother.  But, somehow, it doesn’t stay small, and it NEVER stays alone!  What once seemed cute and harmless, in time, becomes ugly and destructive.  If you try to rid yourself of it on your own without the help of the Holy Spirit, you’ll find you won’t get rid of much.  Self-reformation, without Jesus, is always unsuccessful!  The help of God is the only cure to rid you of these pesky critters!  It is life to the Christian, and death to the ‘cute’ little sin lurking in the dark corners of your heart.

 

Is there a tiny little mouse hiding somewhere in your heart?  Don’t wait until he invites his ‘not so tiny friends’ over.  Call on Jesus now, and save yourself from a lot of destruction and ugliness!

 

By:  Anita Mondragon