She never went to bed without spraying.
My maternal grandparents lived in an old
farmhouse on a rather large acreage of land. Enough that they didn’t have to
worry about neighbors minding their business. But the old house had no central air
or heat. A few space gas heaters kept it tolerable in the wintertime (the old
fireplaces in each room had long since been boarded up), and open windows and
fans kept it cool in the hot, Southern summers.
Although I don’t remember the screens in
the old house having rips in them, somehow an unwelcome guest arrived every
night during the warm months, about nine months out of the year.
My grandmother had a nightly ritual I
observed when I spent the night with her. I slept in the front bedroom, as she
called it. A large room with two full-sized beds, an old piano, and other
bedroom furniture. My cousin, who lived next door, often slept over when I
spent the night.
Before settling in for the night and
telling ghost stories, my grandmother made her way around the room to all the
windows with a can of Raid insect spray. She sprayed the screens, hoping to
kill any mosquitoes that had already made their way in and to prevent any who
hadn’t, but were thinking about it. This smell, along with the mosquito truck
that made its regular appearance down the highway out front and let out a cloud
of repellant, was almost more than I could bear. Neither seemed to help.
No sooner than my grandmother had turned
the light off than I heard the singing. A female mosquito seeking blood to
fertilize her eggs. My grandmother had no night lights or outside pole lights.
The room was as black as tar. I swatted, but to no avail. I couldn’t see what I
swatted at. I could only hear it. I covered as much of my body as possible,
hoping the intruder wouldn’t get under the cover and suck on my body all night.
Eventually, sleep overtook the singing, but I normally woke up to several
whelps on various parts of my body.
Although bad, the mosquito had an
influence. Just as Solomon says one bad person can destroy much good.
Our influence is good or bad. We make the
choice. From the mosquito’s perspective, her influence brought good. She was
fertilizing her eggs. From my standpoint, it involved bad. She sucked my blood
and made an itchy whelp.
God’s Word tells the requirements for a
good influence. It requires sacrifice. God’s ways entail love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A
good influence leads to careful consideration of our actions, attitudes, and
words so that we influence in the way we intend. And our influence must be
intentional for it to be good consistently.
Bad influences are easy to make. All we
must do is follow the flow of the majority. They’ll lead us in the wrong
direction almost every time.
Ask God to give you the power of a
mosquito’s influence—only make it good.
Prayer: Father, help us to influence our
world in a good way.
Tweetable: How's your influence?
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