Do you know what this phrase means? According to phrases.org.uk, it means: “A small but irritating flaw that spoils the whole.” Small. Irritating. Flaw. But… it spoils the whole! Taking this statement a step further we can apply it to ‘life’ situations. Unquestionably, far too many times the fly is US! We are the ones who create the chaos and mess. And a mess never cares if the one causing it had good intentions or not.
Often good intentions (you know where that leads) are not fully thought out. Because God had and has decided to work through us – which requires our agreement, we can be the cause of misunderstandings. Too often we rest on our own understanding and the mess only gets muddier. You would think that previous experience would dictate what not to do, even when we don’t know what the next step should be. Not always the case. We repeat, sometimes because that’s all we know. Rather than turning to an ‘expert’, we aggravate the situation.
It is the outcome that is painful – knowing we caused the reaction(s) by others. It does nothing for one’s self-esteem to know that small, irritating, and flaw can be applied to what we did or said – that we caused the ‘spoiled’ (fill in the blank). However, we don’t need to stay in that condition – we may have been the fly but because of Who we represent we can rely on Him to help us redeem the situation.
Not every situation is grave and not every situation is insignificant – it’s the process that we need to learn. We can, with the Father’s help, change the outcome so that understanding occurs. As we learn from our ‘fly experiences’ and apply this learning, we find ourselves less and less in those situations that cause us to cry – HELP! We have the mind of Christ (1Corinthians 2:16), we can put on the new man (Colossians 3:10), we can transform our thinking (Romans 12:2) and speak and act as the Ambassadors (2Corinthians 5:20) we are created to become. In Him – nothing is ever hopeless.
