It is a very unfortunate reality that if you would spend a few days in a Filipino home, you’d likely  encounter at least 1 cockroach. No matter how clean the house, I suppose the temperate weather makes it idyllic for these crawly creatures to breed.

As a result, Filipinos have devised a local tool for pest control. It is inexpensive, available to all levels of society and is used in a simple “aim-and-hit” manner, as follows:

Hahaha! I remember a few years ago when we lived in a small, kind of dingy rented house in the dusty city of General Santos. Though our pest problem was not at overwhelming levels, I was used to hearing mom’s occasional shriek as she saw cockroaches skittering across the living room or kitchen floor. These screams would usually be followed by her hollering at me to pick up a rubber slipper and kill it…which of course would be ensued by my refusal to do so. :P

On one of those days, I distinctly remember mom running around with one slipper (the other one in her hand) trying with high spirits to slay an ill-fortuned roach. Having cornered it, she figured her time of revenge had come. However, the little thing suddenly flapped its wings and started to fly around. In her alarm, mom started aiming with her slipper but as it scurried about even more, she panicked and with a loud thud stepped on the poor thing- with her bare foot! 8O

Haha! Mom was caught between hysterical laughter and the sickening feeling of having a squashed roach stuck to her foot. I laughed so hard I thought I would faint.

The lesson? Panic clouds the verity that there is a proper way of doing everything. 8) True, mom did effectively carry out her objective but in panic, she did so with a bad consequence. So in stress- and panic-inducing situations, let’s not get ourselves caught with that sickening feeling of having made a bad, rash decision. Breathe in, visualize that goo on your foot and take a moment to think it through. ;)

>> 1 Thes. 5:8, “But let us who live in the light think clearly, protected by the body armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.”

Advertisement