On a recent Sunday afternoon, I grabbed my bike and pedaled up the hill leading out of town. Not long into my ride, several scruffy dogs dashed after me, barking and snapping at my ankles. I’ve christened these yapping mutts “wheel chasers,” and although they create a ruckus, I’m not alarmed as I cruise past on my mountain bike. That’s because I’ve encountered many of their kind as we drive to Quechua villages. The wheel chasers’ game is to lie in wait until a vehicle passes, then run after the truck en masse, snapping at the wheels and yipping like a pack of hyenas. The dogs never actually bite the wheels, and after several meters of wheel-chasing, they return to their ditches to wait for the next vehicle to pass. 

My biking pal Betty has never driven a car, so she doesn’t realize that if you just keep on moving, the dogs eventually lose interest and give up their chase. When wheel chasers come after us on our bikes, Betty always slows down and tries to kick them away, frequently falling off her bike in the process!  

These irritating wheel chasers remind me of the constant barbs and arrows shot at us by our enemy. You’ll recognize some of these attacks - dealing with yet another food-borne illness; getting pick-pocketed on the way to the market; the aggravation of an electrical outage when your homeschooled child needs to take an online exam. It could be a loud, all-night party next door when you need to get up at the crack of dawn, or your water supply being shut off with no warning.

Taken by themselves, none of these irritants is “big enough” to make us give up on our calling, but they sure do tempt us to lash out in frustration like my friend Betty who kicks at the wheel chasers from her bike. Instead of reacting, however, let’s learn to recognize these as spiritual attacks, and to keep marching forward, while holding on to the promise that we have already overcome our enemies, because the God who lives in us is greater than the enemy who is in the world!