Here's a story from when I was about 8 years old. My family lived in Dallas, Texas at the time. My dad was a seminary student. Legally, he was allowed to work 20 hours a week on campus. My mom was not permitted to earn money at all. Needless to say, money was tight. My mom would walk to the grocery store with my brother and me. He and I would stand in the seafood section, looking at the live lobsters, while she sought out the best deals in the rest of the store. We really knew nothing about lobsters except what we observed in that tank - large waving pincers held shut by rubber bands. The prices made it clear we would never have access to our own lobster.
One weekend, we drove up to Oklahoma to spend time with a friend of my dad's from seminary who was now a pastor. My parents had sleeping bags inside the house, and my brother and I slept in a tent in their yard. When we woke up in the morning, the pastor's preschool aged children came out and joined us in the tent. Then I heard my brother, aged 6 at the time, marveling at some creature he saw inside the tent. "I think it's a lobster!"
I had a look, and sure enough, there was a creature with an exoskeleton, waving a sharp pincer-like appendage (minus rubber bands). It was quite a bit smaller than the lobsters we saw in Kroger's; it was only the size of my hand. My thought was that we should boost it out of the tent so it could crawl back into its lobster hole before it poked us, but my brother was determined to kill it. I felt sorry for the poor lobster, but he was not to be deterred. I took the smaller of the pastor's two children to the far side of the tent and played with her while my brother and his little friend set about a lobster hunt.
You may have already guessed that the sharp-appendaged invertebrate we met in landlocked Oklahoma was not an actual lobster, but something more sinister and potentially dangerous to small children. The hunting method my brother chose posed less risk to him than my plan might have. He took his pillow, dropped it on the "lobster", and proceeded to trample it. The creature, somewhat damaged, emerged from beneath the pillow and crawled on top of it, waving its sharp end ominously. My brother then carried it outside the tent and dumped it onto the dirt outside.
At this point, we were called to get ready for church, and the boys reluctantly tore themselves from watching the writhing of their victim. By the time we returned to our tent, the creature was dead and covered in ants. We forgot all about it, as the remainder of the afternoon involved riding horses and discovering that calves in fields don't willingly stand still for you to pet them and do run faster than 8 year old girls.
A few years later, we were discussing something over dinner and the topic of lobsters came up. "Do you remember that lobster in Oklahoma?" my brother or I asked. We both did, and discussed it at some length as my parents' eyebrows lifted and their eyes grew wide. "Lobsters don't live in Oklahoma," my parents insisted. We knew they had to be wrong - we had seen this one with our own eyes! We were only persuaded when my dad found a book on the shelf and opened it to a photograph of exactly the sort of creature we had encountered. The caption informed us it was a scorpion.
This sort of situation helps me realize how little control I as a parent have over my children's safety. My parents had never warned us about scorpions, probably because they had never considered that there were any in the middle of the United States. The world is full of dangers parents don't or can't anticipate, and there is no way of knowing how our children might reason through how to respond to a new situation. And yet we were not stung. God protected us through my brother's bold action that happened not to bring any of us into close contact with the scorpion's tail.
The few situations where God chooses not to step in tend to be the ones we remember, but I am convinced there are many more times when something bad could have happened and, through some unpredictable combination of circumstances and ideas, the danger is averted. I look forward to one day asking God how many other situations he stepped into to protect me and those I love.
One weekend, we drove up to Oklahoma to spend time with a friend of my dad's from seminary who was now a pastor. My parents had sleeping bags inside the house, and my brother and I slept in a tent in their yard. When we woke up in the morning, the pastor's preschool aged children came out and joined us in the tent. Then I heard my brother, aged 6 at the time, marveling at some creature he saw inside the tent. "I think it's a lobster!"
I had a look, and sure enough, there was a creature with an exoskeleton, waving a sharp pincer-like appendage (minus rubber bands). It was quite a bit smaller than the lobsters we saw in Kroger's; it was only the size of my hand. My thought was that we should boost it out of the tent so it could crawl back into its lobster hole before it poked us, but my brother was determined to kill it. I felt sorry for the poor lobster, but he was not to be deterred. I took the smaller of the pastor's two children to the far side of the tent and played with her while my brother and his little friend set about a lobster hunt.
You may have already guessed that the sharp-appendaged invertebrate we met in landlocked Oklahoma was not an actual lobster, but something more sinister and potentially dangerous to small children. The hunting method my brother chose posed less risk to him than my plan might have. He took his pillow, dropped it on the "lobster", and proceeded to trample it. The creature, somewhat damaged, emerged from beneath the pillow and crawled on top of it, waving its sharp end ominously. My brother then carried it outside the tent and dumped it onto the dirt outside.
At this point, we were called to get ready for church, and the boys reluctantly tore themselves from watching the writhing of their victim. By the time we returned to our tent, the creature was dead and covered in ants. We forgot all about it, as the remainder of the afternoon involved riding horses and discovering that calves in fields don't willingly stand still for you to pet them and do run faster than 8 year old girls.
A few years later, we were discussing something over dinner and the topic of lobsters came up. "Do you remember that lobster in Oklahoma?" my brother or I asked. We both did, and discussed it at some length as my parents' eyebrows lifted and their eyes grew wide. "Lobsters don't live in Oklahoma," my parents insisted. We knew they had to be wrong - we had seen this one with our own eyes! We were only persuaded when my dad found a book on the shelf and opened it to a photograph of exactly the sort of creature we had encountered. The caption informed us it was a scorpion.
This sort of situation helps me realize how little control I as a parent have over my children's safety. My parents had never warned us about scorpions, probably because they had never considered that there were any in the middle of the United States. The world is full of dangers parents don't or can't anticipate, and there is no way of knowing how our children might reason through how to respond to a new situation. And yet we were not stung. God protected us through my brother's bold action that happened not to bring any of us into close contact with the scorpion's tail.
The few situations where God chooses not to step in tend to be the ones we remember, but I am convinced there are many more times when something bad could have happened and, through some unpredictable combination of circumstances and ideas, the danger is averted. I look forward to one day asking God how many other situations he stepped into to protect me and those I love.
No comments:
Post a Comment