Jigger Digger

A jigger, or chigoa flea, is a type of parasite found here in Uganda. On contact, the female burrows into a person’s skin on the bottom of feet, around nails, on shins…or basically anywhere it can find an open wound or scar. It then makes a home for itself deep in the skin and, painfully for the host/person, begins to flourish, grow, and multiply by producing an egg sac that when broken, releases hundreds of baby jiggers into the skin. As the jiggers grow and multiply, and infection spreads, the host/person can become immobilized or hindered from daily activities.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity of participating in a “Jigger Digger” clinic hosted by another ministry in a small community on an isolated peninsula just across Lake Victoria. I headed out by boat with a team of people from the Ggaba market to reach the host facility and pastor of the “island community”. This was my first time ever recognizing a jigger, let alone digging them out of people with safety pins, scalpels, and tweezers. In the process, I realized the many jiggers I had in myself that needed to be (painfully) dug out as well.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, new things have come.” Do we, do I, really live life in the truth and reality of this verse? Do I accept that the old has passed away, and that new things have come? Or do I allow jiggers into my life, things that don’t belong in me, into my open wounds and scars left by trying to hold onto the old things?

Jesus said that when He went away, He would send us a Helper, the Holy Spirit to come and abide in us. (John 14) He said that we are thus covered in His righteousness, we are made holy as He is holy. Salvation and redemption isn’t a process, it isn’t a journey. It’s an instantaneous change made in us. It starts the moment the Holy Spirit abides in us. We don’t have to try to be holy, we don’t have to try to be patient or loving or kind or slow to anger…we are all of those things. “…the old has passed away; behold, new things have come.”

Too often I hold onto my old nature instead of living in the reality of my new nature. I use my own strength to try to be holy, to try to be patient and loving and slow to anger…then I fail, always. I fail and become frustrated or hurt because of my actions or words. This frustration and hurt just leads to more sin and pain in my and others’ lives, when it isn’t followed by repentance. Repentance of my personal desires, repentance of not living in the new-ness that Christ paid for with His life. Repentance for not proclaiming and thus living out His power in my life and circumstances. Romans 6:3-7 “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father; so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection; knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.”

If we are in Christ, we are no longer slaves to sin. We are set free. Set free to be who God has made us to be, whole and wholly His, wholly in His presence, wholly with His Spirit—always. We are free from the infection of sin, jiggers.

Digging jiggers out of feet is painful, painful for the digger and painful for the inflicted/infected. God has already dug all the jiggers out of our lives, Jesus paid the price on the cross. Why do we continue to let them back in?

“For sin’s human captives (us) God never intends anything less than full deliverance (from the sorrows, pains, and misconceptions of this sinful world). The Christian message rightly understood means this: The God who by the word of the gospel proclaims men free, by the power of the gospel actually makes them free. To accept anything less than this is to know the gospel in word only, without its power.” A.W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man

Let us not accept anything less than the full deliverance paid for upon us. Let us not live the gospel in word only, but also in power. Let us not hold onto old things, but walk in newness of life. Though the process may be painful, let us get the jiggers out of our lives before they manifest and continue to infect and immobilize us.

Digging out jiggers at the clinic.