Gold Fish and the Tank of Death

Gold Fish and the Tank of Death

I love fish, pet fish. I love gold fish and I love fresh water, tropical fish and I love Beta fish. Two years ago I ventured into the unknown world of the home aquarium. It all started one Sunday at the local markets. I fell in love with a tank full of gold fish and joyfully I selected two comets that were excitedly looking at me and just asking to be bought. I borrowed a friend's old fish tank, cleaned it up, purchased pretty coloured stones for the bottom  and even bought a plant to make the fish feel at home. Alas, those fish died and so did the next lot of gold fish and the next. I started to feel like I was a fish murderer. By now we had progressed from a borrowed tank to our own purchased fish tank. Then started the  *Research Project*. Going from pet shop to pet shop, that specialised in fish, my friend and I asked question after question. It was here we discovered that a fish tank must “cycle”. A tank needs to mature in their levels of bacteria and nitrates to allow the fish to thrive in their enclosed environment. I hastened this process along with the purchase of a product called Start Smart which added the necessary bacteria to the tank. Now my fish were growing, staying alive and even thriving. They were named. Joseph was a beautiful Black Moor, who interestingly enough, slowly turned a flaming orange colour, and Rachel was a gorgeous golden comet. Over the space of several years we ventured from gold fish to fresh water tropical fish and even into Beta Fish. Eventually we had five different fish tanks full of brightly coloured fish. I regularly cleaned the fish tanks in such a way as to not disturb the bacteria cycle, which I checked weekly through a Ph testing kit.

In my laundry cupboard are a stack of white cloths I use for a variety of household cleaning. I clean something and then I pop the cloth immediately into the wash. I also use these same cleaning cloths to wipe the algae off the inside of the fish tanks each week. One week I was working my way through the fish tanks cleaning them one by one, starting with my gold fish tank. I was taking their filters out to clean, Ph testing the water, topping the water levels up (which included adding a special chemical to the water to make it fish friendly), adding some bacterial drops to the water and of course wiping the inside of the tank clean of the algae. Approximately an hour after cleaning the fish tanks my goldfish, Joseph and Rachel, started to swim with their bodies slightly tilted. Very quickly they belly sided up and were trying to struggle around the tank upside down, gasping as they went. Slowly they sank to the bottom of the tank and there they died. I was shocked and in grief. It was so sudden. I looked at the other tanks and the fish were alive and thriving. What had I done to make a difference in the gold fish tank to their environment that would annihilate them so quickly?

Several hours later I realised my terrible mistake. I had not used a clean cloth in wiping the algae off the tanks. I had used a cloth I had previously used only once, with a little bit of window cleaner on our bathroom mirror. I had not placed that cloth immediately into the wash. A tiny amount of cleaning fluid still on the cloth poisoned my entire tank. The other fish tanks were fine because the gold fish tank had absorbed all the cleaning product. I had killed my poor fish.

I pondered the thought of what I had done and I realised how much that reminded me of an unforgiving heart. God calls  us to forgive others and He empowers us to do so but when we don’t allow Him to work forgiveness in our lives towards others it becomes a bitterness deep inside of us. Sometimes we are not even aware of it’s existence. It becomes like the cleaning product on my cloth seeping it’s way through the entire tank until it’s deadly poison works to kill life itself. An unforgiving spirit brings bitterness, resentment, anger, jealousy and hate into our hearts. It affects not only our thoughts and our words, our spiritual experience, but even our physical health. Have I got unforgiveness deep in my heart? Do I see the fruit of it in my words, thoughts and my attitudes.  May my prayer be “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”Ps 139:23, 24

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Eph 4:31,32