A mosquito bite is a misnomer since mosquitoes don’t have teeth. They “bite” us through a pair of needle-like structures called “stylets.” Armed with pointy mandibles with saw-like edges, the female ones puncture our skin to suck our blood, not for a meal, but for protein needed to lay their eggs. Worse than just being blood suckers, these flying insects are also vectors, or pathogen (germ)-carrying creatures. Unwittingly, mosquitoes are the Uber delivery service of germs to the animal kingdom, humans in particular.
Recently, the “twinning” incidents that exposed swimming-hungry guests at a resort in Caloocan City and party-famished visitors at a compound in Quezon City are like watching a horde of mosquitoes in still waters! Such noxious episodes were perfidious by themselves. These scenes of the joys of summer, during a pandemic, can ultimately reveal a tragic message as there were no social distancing, no masks, and very little elbow room between and among friends, kin and strangers. Indeed, those few hours of merriment turned out to be a lengthier nightmare as some of the attendees tested positive for Covid! Perhaps it only took one person in such events to transmit a viral component to another, multiplied 500 or so times, just like a single mosquito.
We can probably offer an ounce of kindness to those who took the irresponsible plunge of socializing under those circumstances. After all, the summer heat was (and still is) getting unbearable. The months of April and May both constitute that time of the year when people from all walks of life “walk the life” of a “tourist”—enjoying the sights and immersing into a culture of adventure. Perchance, being locked inside one’s cave of a home for the longest time has proved to be difficult, if not intolerable. Hence, when the opportunity for a social event came, most if not all of these “mosquitoes” suddenly suffered from amnesia! They forgot that we are still living in the middle of a pandemic.
Unfortunately, such epigrammatic and reckless decision harmed more people. The entire assembly of guests, their families and every other person they may come in contact with after the event can eventually be contaminated. These kinds of erroneous choices are clearly reminiscent of what the Bible articulates in 1 Corinthians 5:6 where the Apostle Paul said: “Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?” Knowing that one sin could corrupt the whole, Paul declared the necessity of bringing one sinful man for excommunication to protect the spiritual lives of others. If leaven used in bread is bad, the bacteria within can easily spread to the rest of the dough, making the bread worthless.
An undersized leaven, a tiny mosquito, a reckless decision to socialize, a lack of discipline, can mutate into a useless piece of bread, a strain of disease, a breeding ground for infection, and a society in endless disarray. Sin, if left unaddressed, or worse tolerated, will corrupt everyone in the community. It is practically the same as ordering germs via our Uber delivery mosquito! As tiny as they may look, mosquitoes are big in deadly diseases like malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis and dengue, among others. Former US President George Washington and his wife Martha suffered from malaria. President Washington acquired it at a young age, and, eventually lost his sense of hearing. Malaria is quite prevalent in Africa, affecting mostly children. Dengue has such a fatal upshot in our country in recent years. All because of a diminutive insect, left to transmit, bludgeon and reproduce.
An impermeable solution to this contagion can either be defensive or offensive. Defensively, we can spray surfaces with a repellant to fend off these “mosquitoes” in our lives, literally and figuratively speaking. Or by way of an offensive strategy, we can opt for a fumigation to kill these germ/chaos-carrying insects and attitude. In our spiritual lives, house cleaning from the inside entails an exercise of discipline—a conscious decision to obey the rules crafted for everyone’s protection and an intentional effort to discover and spread the good news about the life-saving message of Jesus Christ. In the Bible, 2 Corinthians 7:1 tells us, “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” If we are addicted to a certain vice—alcohol, pornography, or drugs—we simply have to stay away from friends and events that would tempt us to use them. A single friend or event can easily make us succumb to the temptation to sin just like how mosquitoes can “bite” us and contaminate our systems with such defiling things!
But the best defense against any such infection from these mosquitoes of sin and folly is an inner cleansing that can only happen through an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Creator. One practice we can do is simply acknowledging His presence in everything that we do. It does not sound as offensive as killing mosquitoes in our midst but it surely helps. Mosquito killers are hard to find since mosquitoes, similar to sin, are all over the place. But surrounding ourselves with God-fearing people is akin to using Baygon or any other mosquito killer available in the market.