The Wormy Puffball
We stayed in the beautiful hills of South Dakota several times during a summer, a few years ago, while my parents were helping at a ministry there. Once while we were there, a lady from the ministry picked a nice big puffball for us to eat (a puffball is a type of mushroom).
After waiting a day or two, we decided to cook it. We arrived at the cabin where we were staying, eager to find out what a puffball tasted like.
A little while after we arrived, Dad called me up to the cabin door. He held the cut-apart puffball in his hand. Lo and behold, the whole inside seemed to be squirming! I was full of little worms!
I was thinking how that puffball can represent us. From the outside it looked normal and appetizing. Just so, we can look pretty good on the outside—do things for people, go to Sabbath school and church every week and act pretty nice—and yet we can be still pretty ugly on the inside—full of jealousy, anger, and pride. If we look pleasant on the outside but are nasty on the inside, we aren’t really Christians (Christians are like Jesus, you know); we are just pretending. That’s called living a lie.
A few days ago, on Sabbath, while we were walking in the hills near our house here in south Dakota, we found some more big puffballs. We broke them open and discovered something interesting—the top parts were good, while the lower parts had worms in them. The little worms evidently enter at the root end!
The devil begins to enter our minds at the deep roots. If you and I aren’t guarding our minds with Jesus’ help we may not really even notice him until he really has control over us so that our words and actions start getting ugly, too.
Only God can help us keep the devil’s ugliness out of our minds. “Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7
Why not ask Jesus right now to show you where the devil might be sneaking into your life and to help you overcome him? “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalms 139:23,24.
Mandy Roshau