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Last year, I was sitting outside the Sears store waiting for the store to open with nothing else to do but make conversation with whoever I could find. To offer full disclosure, I was probably at the Sears store because I was in the doghouse with my wife, Mrs. Kristie Murphy, who happens to be the kindest, sweetest and most caring woman I have ever met.

Kristie Murphy is the epitome of what a Southern Belle is.

I am the luckiest guy in the world to be married to such a gem of a woman.

However, with all that being said, I sometimes find myself in the doghouse which is why I was at Sears that morning trying to talk to anyone who would talk to me because I had been given the silent treatment for a length of time where I just needed someone to talk to. Just then, a couple in their sixties came riding up on a Harley-Davison bike.

That looked interesting, so I thought I would talk to them a while. You can have a very interesting conversation with a couple of 60 year old bikers.

After that conversation wore down, another couple drove up in a pick-up truck. That’s more my style, I thought. In a few minutes the man got out and sat on the tailgate of the pickup. Soon his wife got out and decided to walk around the parking lot to get her daily exercise. Now understand, I was there way early in the morning with nothing else to do.

It wasn’t long before the gentleman and I were engaged in conversation. I asked him what he did for a living. He told me he was a “bug catcher”. A bug catcher! I couldn’t believe it. He went on to tell me how he worked with farmers in the state, helping to find and exterminate bugs and other crawly creatures. He explained how he sets bug traps in the fields and how to go about calculating the infestation per acre in the general area. Once he finds and identifies the bugs, he recommends a cure to the farmer. An entomologist! Amazing!

As I was driving around Todd County one morning, I actually saw one of these guys at work. There he was. The headlights of his pickup truck were still on. He had been there since early-thirty….. catching bugs. I slowed downed to see what he was doing. There in his hand was a bug trap and he was sorting and counting the catch of the day. He wanted to find out what was eating up the crop. What a job!

As I rolled on down the road, it hit me. How come we are not as smart as some agricultural agent? Why is it that we can’t be as prepared to finding out what is eating us up?

We often go through life with things eating away at us. These things slowly move from thoughts to emotions, to personality, gnawing at our very heart and soul. Obviously, we sit by and let it happen without even a fight.

What if we were at least as aware as the farmers? Perhaps we should set traps to find out what’s eating at our souls. Perhaps it is a creeping critter like “faithlessness.” How many of those would we find in those traps? Maybe it could be something as slimy and slithering as “apathy”.

Who knows, it could be a critter with a razor sharp stinger like “gossip”. What if we set the traps and found the slow crawling , pot-bellied, lazy legged creature of “procrastination”?

Whatever is out there, we must realize that Satan is going to use whatever he can to hurt us. He takes no prisoners. He wants us to suffer. He wants us eaten alive. We must be watchful.

Just like the little guy I saw, we need to get up early, turn those lights on, set up those traps and find out whats eating us. If we don’t, there will be no crop in our field and when we stand before God fruitless, He will ask “Why?”

God Bless and GO CATS!

Rev. Scott Murphy is the Pastor at the First Christian Church in Russellville.