There I sat in a low-income apartment in the red light district of Cincinnati.  The only  thing that wasn’t moving was me.  The walls were crawling.  The furniture was making me see double.  The floors were pulsating like waves on the sea.  I think if I had stood up, I would have been easily carried into the next room.  My friends and I had gone to this place to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I was a student at God’s Bible College in Cincinnati.  This was our mission field.

     The creepy crawling things were cockroaches.  There must have been thousands of them.  The residents of the apartment acted as if the bugs were part of the home decor.  I thought they were disgusting.  What was God thinking when He created these horrible creatures?

     I understand that the United States was blessed with these little guys in the early 1600’s, when they were brought over from Africa.  They have been tormenting us ever since.  The smaller variety live in the northern states and usually are found in unsanitary places, places where they can find food laying around.  Their larger cousins, in the southern states, are called palmetto bugs.   These guys are giants compared to their Ohio kin.   In Mexico they are la cucoracha.

     Now you can change their size and you can change their name, but you can’t change what they are.  William Shakespeare once said, “A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet”.  I say a cockroach by any other  name is still creepy and disgusting.

     I know that God’s word says in Ecclesiastes that everything has a purpose and everything is made beautiful in His time,  but I simply can’t imagine a beautiful cockroach.  What could possibly be their purpose in life (other than to creep us out)?