My wife is much tastier than I am. (She smells better too).
It seems that if mosquitoes or other little beasties have to make a choice between her and me, they choose her. Sometimes when dogs are around and little fleas skip here and there, they bound for her with knife and fork in hand, a napkin knotted around their little flea necks. They usually pass me up.
I suppose I should be offended at these snubs, but this has obvious advantages.
If I’m awakened by a terrible scream at 3 a.m. in the morning– “eeeeeeeeeeee”– and I know that a ravenous mosquito roams the premises lusting for blood, that’s okay. The chances are probably better than 50/50 that he’ll choose her because she tastes better.
Someone said it’s a question of blood chemistry or skin type or some such. I just know you get more sleep if you taste bad. My counsel to young people who are threatening marriage—have them check out the “tastiness factor” when you take your blood test to apply for a marriage license.
If you are tastier than your proposed future partner you might want to think about opting out of this situation and choosing someone who tastes better than you. You’ll sleep better in the future.
Once again some of you wonder, “How in the world is David going to get a spiritual application out of this?” Hang on, I’ll get there.
It’s nice to have someone take our “bites” for us. In a sense we all experience pain because of the Lord Jesus.
“Wait, wait! What are you talking about David? That’s not the way it goes!” Just hang on a minute okay?
We have an adversary, because the Lord Jesus has an adversary. Because this monster hates Him, he hates us too. The devil and his evil spirits exist in spite of all “intellectual” scoffing that relegates him to overactive imagination from the Middle Ages.
This enemy hates Jesus and he knows that when He strikes us, He hurts the Lord. We think it’s about us, but the devil hates and attacks us because he hates the Lord Jesus. Each one of us who suffers or falls pierces the heart of Jesus.
Satan is not a little red guy with Givenchy horns, but a powerful enemy who despises the Lord Jesus and us. He desperately wants the place that belongs to our God. And because we’re on the Lord’s side, he attacks us too.
Don’t let that bother you. You should see how he treats his own servants—they’re slaves.
You think his blows hurt? We really don’t get the full force of them because the Lord Jesus protects us. At the Cross, the Lord Jesus bore every blow the devil struck and even now He softens the blows for us, otherwise many of them could kill us.
Honestly we can’t complain much about suffering. At the Cross, Jesus took all the “bites” that should have been ours, and my friend, these weren’t the mosquito and flea variety.
On one side I believe the blows of the Gentiles and Jews were inspired by the devil. Jesus said of the darkness “This is you hour.” But in another real sense those blows came from heaven.
Listen to this astonishing declaration,
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put him to grief.” (Isa. 53:10).
Incredible! Did the Father take pleasure in His Son’s pain? NO! But listen to how Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message version,
“Still it’s what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.”
Jesus bore our “bites”, which hurt a billion times more than we can imagine. That should have been me on the Cross because He suffered there for my sin—and yours.
It’s nice to have a good-smelling wife to draw the mosquitoes away from you, but oh how important it is to put your faith and hope in this Jesus who was crushed on the Cross by the punishment that should have been ours.
Love Him! Serve Him with everything in you! He merits it.