...the kids and I were walking over to Washington School for a wicked
game of "knockout" (the kids beat me every time!). On the way we saw a little gopher
in the middle of the street. He didn't zip away when he saw us, tail straight up like a bumper car, like gophers usually
do, and it was soon clear that he had been injured somehow.
Man, I hate that! Now what do we do?! I hated the idea of just leaving him and letting
nature run its course - which, at the moment appeared to be to leave him for dessert
for the cat that was circling 20 feet away.
But then, what could we do for him?
Well, we couldn't just leave him to the cat, so we dug out our old gerbil aquarium,
filled it with grass, scooped up the injured gopher in an empty ice cream container
and carefully dumped him in. I made a trip up to Eagles for a box of gerbil food
(seeing as how they didn't have any "Injured Gopher" food, I figured it was the next best
thing).
I knew the chances were the poor little thing wasn't long for this world, but at least
this way he would die peacefully. Which he did.
The thing is, as far as that gopher knew, he was being scooped out of the world he
had known. He wouldn't have considered being captive in an aquarium a good thing.
But then, he hadn't seen the cat salivating in the next yard.
And that probably is the way it is with us. Sometimes, from our perspective, the
things that happen to us seem bad. We can't understand why God would allow them
to happen to us. We just don't see the cat, all we can see is the aquarium.
We never see the things God saves us from.
The thing is, our efforts to help the gopher were very limited. God's efforts are
not. His love is perfect, his ways are perfect.
So lately I have been reminding myself of that simple truth,
Nothing happens that isn't God's will.
It makes things a whole lot less stressful!
Well, that's about it for now.
I hope I'll be back to write some more in a few weeks!
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