We have a raccoon problem. Cindy drove into the parking lot to drop me off at my truck and a raccoon was sitting in the middle of the concrete just looking at me. The lights of the van did not seem to startle him at all. He continued to pick up bits of trash, searching them and then dropping them back on the ground. We watched him for a minute. Then I got out to walk to my vehicle and he finally decided to leave. He headed straight for the engine area of my truck. He disappeared.
By the time I got to my door, I could not see him anywhere. The area under the slide was dark, so I assumed he was hiding in the corner, but I shined my light around and could see nothing. All the way home I kept expecting him to come scrambling out onto my feet. When I got home, I checked outside the hood area and did not see any sign of him.
Over the last few months, Steve Gowan has trapped multiple raccoons in the church building. He takes them several miles away in the country to drop them off. I’m wondering if they are like homing pigeons and keep finding their way back to us. We keep searching the building trying to find their entry holes and blocking them. They keep finding ways in.
It feels like our lives. Trouble keeps coming back. It's hard to root it out. We confess the sin and then amazingly fall back into the same trap. We drop our guard and in that slight opening, disobedience finds a foothold. I’ve watched the videos of the traps Steve sets in the church. The raccoons always look so cute with their little bandit masks, but they bring fleas. They tear stuff to shreds. Too often we want to overlook our own sins; we just want to pass it off as unimportant. We cannot give up. We have to keep up the struggle to seek the presence of Christ that drives everything else away. Give no space to the evil one.
The first Bible memory verse I learned as a new Christian was John 10:10, I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. The first part of the verse says, The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. Faith is believing that Jesus’ way is always better than the substitutes that the world offers.