Suddenly there were rats.
Some years ago villagers in parts of
Borneo found rats everywhere and with them the threats that come from such an
infestation.
It seemed especially cruel because
considerable efforts had recently been made by the World Health Organisation to
eliminate another threat – mosquitoes.
As if that wasn’t enough the thatched roofs of their homes were frequently
collapsing, weakened by some other unwelcome pest.
There are times like this the world over. Trouble
comes in threes, goes the old saying.
That’s when we can get very touchy about God. After all, it seems an oversight on His part
that any trouble gets through at all and we feel the more aggrieved when it
feels like He’s mistakenly let several
enemies past the entry gate at once.
Back to Borneo.
The rats, it turned out, had become numerous because the cats were not catching them any
longer. Why? Easy – the village cats had all fallen sick and died. (That was perhaps a fourth calamity).
The reason for the dead cats was harder to
spot. After all, what has your cat eaten on its roaming today? It turned out that lizards were the
problem. Having eaten lizards for years
the cats discovered too late that the lizards were now poisonous. The lizards were poisonous because they ate
the flies. The lizards had probably thought they were on to a good thing
because the flies had recently become markedly easier to catch – well, often dead in
fact.
[I digress to point out that the roofs of the houses were made of a thatch
that was susceptible to moth larvae. The
said flies, until they began dying out, had always eaten enough larvae (before
themselves being eaten by the lizards – are you still with me?) to keep the
thatch in good order. Dead flies = happy munching moth larvae = collapsed roofs.]
The dead flies? Ah yes. That was
because of the World Health Organisation’s chemical attack on the mosquitoes
(remember them?). The chemical was poisoning the flies too.
All the bad things were part of one system
failure.
Since Adam the Bible instructs human beings that they are in sin’s
dysfunctional (theologians call it fallen) system. Bad things happen amid remaining good
things. Why so many troubles? What could they possibly have to do with each
other? The Bible makes it clear that it
is Man, not God that has let the multiplicity of enemies through the door. Our random agonies are in the collective
chain of results from sin and natural judgment.
This is why, as
the Bible ends, this promise is made: He will wipe away every tear
from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning,
nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.
In Christ’s new order it is not that
there will be fewer problems, less sin and reduced sadness. They will be gone. A failed system will have passed away.
