Skunks are the new raccoons. It used to be that every road in the county was littered with what used to be a raccoon in one form or another. Lately though, the local highways and by-ways have been decorated with skunks, or more accurately, what used to be a skunk. This past summer the evening air was giving hints that the skunk population was growing, but I had hoped my nose was sending false alarms. I hadn’t seen a skunk in the wild for about six years, but their increased presence became undeniable after noticing the striped lane markings were more than just white paint. I’m not sure how it’s possible, but a skunk/vehicle collision sets off a chemical chain reaction that turns the normally bad scent of a skunk into a weapon of mass di-stink-tion. The resultant carnage is so offensive that even the bottom-feeders wait weeks before going to dine and dash. That’s gross!
And speaking of gross, let’s consider the tick - wood or deer - you take your pick. Both were more abundant this past year than in all my previous years here combined. I thought the cold evenings we’ve recently been experiencing would be the end of them, but I was wrong. Just yesterday while petting the dog, my hand brushed over several large raisins stuck in her fur – only they weren’t raisins. They were a couple of ticks two sips away from bursting. That’s nasty! If you’re still reading and wondering what I did after my discovery, I reminded the kids they needed to brush the dog, waited for the groans of disgust, and then went to pull crabgrass out of the lawn.
Crabgrass is an ugly and destructive weed that spreads out from a very small root structure, robbing the adjacent grass of light and water. I wound up pulling and popping out the crabgrass by hand, because the name-brand crabgrass killer I applied to the lawn (twice) had acted more as a fertilizer. The resultant crop of weeds threatened to undo most of the lawn I had just planted this past spring.
After several wheelbarrows of weeds had been pulled, I started to wonder if crabgrass was skunk food, or if there was any link between the weeds and the ticks, or the ticks and the skunks. I wondered what was going on that there were so many skunks, ticks, and weeds this year. Were there really more than usual, or was I just noticing them more because I had somehow become fixated on them? It was a little bit of both.
There is no doubt that there were more noxious pests and weeds this year than in years past, and the more I set my sights on them, the more they seemed to increase. My visual acuity for spying skunks, ticks, and crabgrass grew by the day. I could spot a tick on a skunk eating crabgrass two hundred yards away. It was as if they and their ilk were everywhere and would soon overrun the world. That’s a wee bit dramatic, I know; but the point is that amidst the beauty of dancing trees, alongside the splendor-filled fields, and beneath the glory of the rising and setting sun, ugliness is seen as well. Seeing the contrast between beauty and ugliness with our natural eyes is often startling and unpleasant, but the contrast between the two is even more startling when it involves God-blessed vision.
One might think that God-blessed eyes only see the good, sacred, and holy; but when God gives spiritual sight to His children, we still see everything. If we think that God-blessed vision involves “rose-colored” corrective lenses, we will be startled, frightened, and even confused by what we see. Eyes that really see do not just see the majesty of God. They also see the raw, unadulterated, and ugly nature of our enemy and ourselves. When God blesses our eyes, He removes the “blinders” and “filters” that are on them, and we not only begin to see with clarity and high definition – we begin to see much more of reality than was previously possible. We begin to see the world through the eyes of God. We start to see beauty as He sees beauty, and we start to see ugliness as He sees it. We increasingly see the contrast between our heavenly Father and the evil one, and yes, between our heavenly Father and ourselves.
Given that God does not prevent us from seeing true evil and ugliness, it is important to know that He doesn’t require or want us to dwell on it. Instead, God calls us to fix our new eyes on Christ and things that are in heaven.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (Phil. 4:8)
Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about things of heaven, not the things of earth. (Col. 3:1-2)
So now when I see ugly or evil through my God-blessed eyes, I just take it for what it is – ugly, really ugly. It offends me, frightens me, and angers me, yet at the same time I’m learning that God has many purposes in letting me see ugly and evil. More importantly, I’m learning to not fixate on it but to focus on Him instead. When I focus on God, I learn that He sees it as well, skunks, ticks, crabgrass, and all; and He has it under control. I hope you learn that from Him too.
Grace to you.
Dave Paukner
