INSTINCT OR CHOICE?
The ranger told us about
the tarantula migration. At this time of year, every year, the males come out
of their burrows and walk across the desert seeking the females. Some travel
over 50 miles to find her. It’s instinct. As humans, we have the instinct to
seek God, our creator. The difference between animals and us is that we can go
against our God-created nature. Unlike animals, we have the free will
to deny instinct—we have the choice to say no, and crawl right back into our
holes.
It’s in our nature to seek
the truth, a truth that is deeper and
farther reaching than even our conscious minds are aware of sometimes. It’s
just a part of who we really are. Some
people distract themselves and busy themselves, so
they never have to confront this essential self-awareness. Others know they’re
seeking, but they don’t know who or what.
That was the case with the
Apostle Paul when he went to Athens. He went to where the people gathered to
discuss philosophies beliefs and “addressed them
as follows: ‘Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every
way, for as I was walking along, I
saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To
an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m
telling you about’” (Acts 17:22-23).
The
Greeks were such seekers, they didn’t want to miss out on any deity, so they
even put up a shrine to the one they might have missed! Hilarious, but it goes
right along with our human nature to seek the truth.
When Paul came along he had the opportunity to tell them about the God they
didn’t know, and the significance of His son Jesus Christ.
In Jeremiah 29: 12-14, our
God gives just a few of the great benefits of searching Him out:
“I will
hear and heed you. Then you will seek Me, inquire
for, and require Me [as a vital necessity] and find Me when you
search for Me with all your heart. I will
be found by you, says the Lord, and I will release you from captivity.”
But like the tarantula,
our journey across the desert has its obstacles, and that’s why we need to seek the Lord every day and in every
situation. It’s so easy to fall into some kind
of mental, emotional or even physical captivity if we dare to think we
can do fine on our own. It’s pretty simple really. God created us, Jesus knows
everything about us, and we are just not
that smart!
For the tarantula, there
are the huge rocks to go over, the snakes and predatory birds to avoid, and the
cholla cactus that throws out barbed spines if you even get close to it. You
don’t even have to touch it for it to become an enemy. And then there’s the
infamous tarantula hawk, a large orange-winged wasp about two inches long.
The tarantula hawk is
mostly passive at every other time of the year, eating only vegetation, but
when the tarantulas migrate, the female wasp becomes a vicious one.
She flashes those
beautiful orange wings and injects her paralyzing venom into the spider, then
pulls the paralyzed victim (about eight times her weight) into a hole below the
sandy desert floor. The spider may or may not awake out of the paralysis as it
becomes the first meal of the baby wasps whose eggs were injected into its hairy flesh.
The point: seeking has its
dangers. The journey has unseen obstacles and hardships. But the tarantulas
don’t just stop. They carry on—it’s instinct. A few get stung by the wasp and
won’t make it, but most of the seekers find what they’re seeking. It’s the same
with us.
God’s Word says, and Jesus
confirms: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will
find; knock, and it will be opened
to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and
to the one who knocks it will be opened”
(Matt. 7:7-8).
Sometimes
we read a scripture and/or say a scripture to ourselves and think
it should work, and then we get disappointed and discouraged when we don’t
get results. That’s because we keep it in our own
realm. We say it to ourselves, and it
doesn’t go where it needs to go. We read and say, “Ask.” But we don’t DO the
asking.
Instead
of just reading and saying the scripture to ourselves, we need to speak
directly to our God, and/or say it to our
Lord Jesus: “Lord, your Word says ‘ask,’ so I AM ASKING You
now. I am SEEKING You now.” Bend your ear to me
now and answer me. I am listening and expecting. Thanks for being here with me
now. Amen.”
There are
many examples in the gospels of those who sought after Jesus. I love the story
of Zacchaeus, who was a short man and climbed up into a tree to be able to see
Jesus, unobstructed by the crowd. And what did Jesus do? Luke 19:5 tells us:
“When
Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down
immediately. I must stay at your house today.” The Carolyn translation would go something like this: “Hey,
buddy, come on down. I want to spend some personal time with you, so let’s go
to your house.”
The male
tarantula’s instinct is to seek a mate once a year. Our instinct by nature is
to seek our Lord and God daily. Let’s follow that instinct and go with the plan
our creator has set before us, one day at a time.
Love,
Carolyn
Check out
my books on Amazon. If you’d like a FREE pdf or word doc. of one of my
booklets, let me know at cjmolica@hotmail.com .
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