Spiritual Growth
Stomping Ant Hills- Argument
Don’t do it! You’ll pay dearly for it. Maybe it was part of the ritual of growing up in the deep south. I guess that’s as good a reason as any other that I might give. I knew better, but I still did it. I don’t know why it would even be tempting, that big red mound of dirt in the yard. Maybe I remembered the itchy, red welts from previous encounters and wanted revenge or maybe i just wanted to be mean. I don’t know why. It was too many years ago to know the reason, but I still remember what happened when I did.
I remember squatting over the ant hill. (My anthills weren’t as big as the ones in this picture.Thank goodness!) I couldn’t see a single ant anywhere. The hill was crusted over, baked hard in the Alabama summer heat. Maybe I thought no one was home. Maybe I was just curious to see if they had all moved off and left the big red dirt mound behind. I remember lifting my foot high in the air over the big, red mound. I remember aiming carefully and stomping my bare, sun-tanned foot into that huge ant hill. I thought I could pull it out before any ants got on my foot, but almost instantly my foot was covered with mad ants. Ants were crawling all over my foot and up my leg, stinging as they covered me.
I remember dancing around…wiping with my hands…trying to shake them off, rubbing them off. By this time the ants were scrambling onto my hands and down my arms…biting and stinging as they ran frantically all over me. I’m screaming by now and my mom sees my frantic dance and thinks I stepped in an ant hill. She grabs the water hose and begins to shower them off my legs and feet. If you’ve never been bitten by fire ants you just can’t imagine how bad they hurt. Why didn’t I just leave them alone. Fire ants have earned their name, their bites sting like fire!
While the Bible says absolutely nothing about stomping ant hills it does warn about something just as foolish, getting in the middle of somebody else’s argument. Don’t do it.
The warning is found in Proverbs 26:17 NLT “Interfering in someone else’s argument is as foolish as yanking a dog’s ears.” I’ve never pulled a dog’s ears, but I do understand its a lot like stomping ant hills.
Anyway, the message in Proverbs 26:17 is clear…don’t get in the middle of an argument that is none of your business and if you disregard it, you will be sorry. Just a life rule everybody should observe!