Fleas

55-year-old Corrie Ten Boom lived with her aging father and sister in Holland, in the watchmaker's shop their family had maintained for 100 years, when the Nazis rolled in and took over. Their narrow, twisty, multi-level home behind and above the shop gave way to a Hiding Place. A small cupboard room off Corrie's own bedroom served as an escape from nosy Nazis for neighborhood Jews. After several years of covert ops smuggling the Jews out of Holland, the family was captured and sent to 'camps'. Corrie and her sister Betsy were flung into a barracks literally crawling with fleas. Corrie freaked out. The loss of home and family, combined with  disgusting quarters in which to 'live', did her in. Betsy told her to start praying, and Corrie balked. Betsy again told her to pray, and be thankful for the fleas -- and she did, but very reluctantly. They dealt with the fleas the best they could, and after a few days other women in the camp told them that they were the luckiest ones in the entire wretched place -- because no guards would ever come to molest them in the Flea Unit. 

I know a family that has been horrified by 'fleas'. You probably do too. Families that cling so hard to 'what they know' that they have no room in their arms for anything new.  

Their seeming contented, well-ordered, blessed-by-God existence has periodically been infested by 'fleas' in the form of divorce, abandonment, estrangement, breaking off of traditions by a few younger members, weddings with babies on the way, unapproved of son-in-laws, you name it. Sometimes the family glossed over certain events, like the ones involving babies, but the other infestations disbanded the family. Mostly philosophically but also physically in a few instances. 

Fleas saved the spinster sisters in Holland from being raped and molested, and they went to their graves pure in body despite being under Nazi rule. That's a miracle.

The Pharisees saw Jesus as a flea infestation, and they took steps to dispatch Him. Little did they know He already was ready to be dispatched to change history. 

These other 'life aberrations' in the family I know, and in others, who use the Bible as a shield against acceptance and variation, could be the opportunity that God has been waiting for them to use to let Him work further in their hearts. I hope that someday they will hear Betsy's words, and get down on their knees, and thank Him for the fleas. 

They just might save them.