Our family was given a pet one day, a beautiful, dark blue Betta fish, also called a Siamese fighter fish. At our house fish never seemed to live very long, but we decided to try keeping this beautiful tropical fish.
The children named him Purple, which described his deep, violet-blue color. We never tired of watching this two-inch-long tropical fish swim gracefully around in its fishbowl. We all agreed that with long, fluttering fins and tails in a variety of jewel-like colors, these fish are another example of God’s delight in creating beautiful things.
Purple ate his food eagerly when it was dropped into his bowl. He even devoured small minnows that the children caught in a nearby stream. He attacked the minnows viciously, as his name of “fighter fish” describes.
One day, after we had kept Purple for a few months, the children found a large snail shell. They all agreed that it would look nice in Purple’s bowl, so Mom dropped it in and everyone ran off to play.
A little while later, Mom looked up from her work in the kitchen and noticed that the fishbowl looked empty. I wonder where that fish is? she thought.
Looking into the bowl closely from all angles, she was puzzled at Purple’s disappearance. He couldn’t have just jumped out, she told herself.
Suddenly, she thought about the shell she had put into the fish’s home that morning. She took it out to examine it more closely. There was no sign of Purple, so she cracked open the shell. There Mom found the lifeless body of poor little Purple, curled into the farthest curve of the shell. He had gone inside and couldn’t swim back out, so had suffocated.
The opening in the shell may have seemed like a nice place to hide, or maybe Purple was looking for food inside. We’ll never know what made him swim into the shell. It reminded the family of the Bible verse that describes people doing the same thing. “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 16:2525There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 16:25)). Why would anyone choose a way that ends in death?
If we open our Bibles to one of the very first pages, we read about the serpent, Satan, tricking Adam and Eve into disobeying God. Ever since, he has been attracting people to his wide, smooth road that seems so nice, but ends in death in that awful place called hell.
Oh, don’t believe Satan’s whispered lies which tell you that you can go any way you want, and that God’s way doesn’t matter. Remember our poor little pet fish who chose a way that led to its death. Instead, follow Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:66Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)).
ML-07/23/1995