Those Unwelcome Webworms and Heartworms

This picture of a beautifully, fully-in-bloom crepe myrtle is what crepe myrtles should look like. Don’t be misled by the picture – it isn’t one of mine. It came from the internet. All nine of my crepe myrtles are home to the uninvited webworms. They came to inhabit my branches with their yucky webs that consume and kill the leaves on them. I didn’t spray them with pesticide this year because it didn’t seem to help last year. Maybe I should reconsider the idea for next year.

I followed the lead of my neighbors with pruning last year to help rid them of those pesky webbed webworms. There was nothing but a trunk and few limbs remaining on them at the end of blooming season. Bare-necked, they looked miserable when I strung Christmas lights on them. Most people don’t notice the Fall webworms’ webs in Spring, because of the season’s lush tree foliage, but now, they have set up residence. These Fall webworms hatched weeks ago. Subtle at first, but now those worms have taken over.

As I thought about these webworms and their sly and subtle strategies, I thought about the subtle, tactical ways the enemy of our souls invades our lives. Anger, jealousy, fear, worry, dread, tendencies to lie and cheat, to watch shows that offer profanity, adultery, and other tools of the enemy that we may think don’t affect us, but they do. We ignore the subtle ways the enemy invades our hearts. We make no big deal about them and allow them to remain. In the meantime, the enemy uses all of those “issues” to eventually take us – our families, our marriages, our businesses, our relationships, and our children down, and even out. Those are the matters-of-the-heart “worms”, that left to themselves – can deceive and consume us.

But we have a triple threat pesticide for the heart “worm” killer when we apply them in the right places. We have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit –- the TRIPLE THREAT — who are our defenders and when we trust in their super powers and seek them with our hearts, we will be immune to the attacks of any enemy.

For tripling up the protection, apply Psalm 1:1-3 “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sits in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose LEAF DOES NOT WITHER. Whatever he does prospers.”

Yes, those who have those beautiful trees who want to be rid of webworms, must go to drastic measures to see them destroyed. And, those of us who desire to be rid of those things in our lives — the heart worms — that have tried to destroy us — we generously apply God’s Word to our TREES — and to our lives and hearts. Best pesticide ever is Revelation 12:11 “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony”.