Entrapment

THERE'S BEEN A MASKED BANDIT AT OUR HOUSE !!!

Every year when the corn gets ripe in our garden we have problems! It will be almost ready to pick and then we go back to get the ripe corn and we find empty cobs! Some "varmint" gets to the corn before we do! Come to find out, it was several 'coons (raccoons for those of you not from the south!) coming in and stuffing themselves with a free, all-you-can-eat corn buffet! Didn't make us happy!

Last fall our son-in-law had a deer feeder on our farm and the corn disappeared quicker than normal. He put up one of those motion detector cameras and when the film was developed he saw the reason. More coons! One picture had about 6 really fat coons around the feeder. And not only did they get what corn was on the ground, one fellow climbed up the feeder and hung upside down to get his fill.

Our sweet corn just didn't "do" this year because of the weather we've been having. So we didn't think we would have a 'coon problem. But then something started eating our tomatoes! They were few and far between as it was and to go out and find the prettiest and the ripest eaten and left hanging from the vine looking like the core on an apple was very aggravating!

Solution: set a live-trap so we could move the pesky animals to someplace where there were no gardens close by. The bait? I would never have believed this but hubby used marshmallows to entice the beasties into the trap! Pretty, white, fluffy, sweet-smelling marshmallows.

And they took the bait. He has caught a coon the past two nights. Each morning when he finds them he takes them several miles from here where there are no houses and lets them go in some nice woods.

Aren't we a lot like the little masked robbers that have been in our garden? We sometimes sneak around and do things that we know we aren't supposed to do as Christians. We think nobody will every know. We forget that God never leaves us and that He sees and knows all we do. So then the devil decides to set a trap for us. (1 Peter 5: 8 "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.") He puts something in the trap that will tempt us to come in. It might be something pretty for me. It might be something sweet for you. It might be something expensive or sensual for another. Whatever our favorite things are the devil will use them to try and get us to do wrong.

When we take the bait and get caught one of two things will happen. Either the devil will finish us off and our testimony as a Christian will be ruined forever...or...we will do like Jonah did in his trap (the belly of the whale) and cry out to God to rescue us. (Jonah 2: 2 "And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I , and thou heardest my voice.")

"I will be glad and rejoice in they mercy; for thou hast considered my trouble, thou hast known my soul in adversities." Psalms 31: 7

May God help us to be able to see more than just the "bait' the devil tempts us with! May we always also be able to see the "trap" waiting to capture us when we take the bait!

Marilyn