Katrina and the Squirrels

Howie likes to remind me, “When squirrels wake up every morning, they have only one thing on their minds: Go to work. They’ve just gotta get themselves somethin’ to eat, and they get it wherever they can.” He usually tells me this after I’ve called them “thieving little varmints.” Howie also reminds me that food sources for squirrels are becoming scarcer as wooded areas are cut down for development. “They’re just near starvin’, Miz Em.”

The multifarious ways in which those rodents have discovered the means to their end convinces me this is true. Nothing seems to stop them. Today two were digging so deeply around the pole I wondered if they finally meant to carry the whole thing away. The same Father’s hand that sustains and feeds the birds of the air and the lilies of the field attends the beasts of the trees. These furry fellas just don’t want to share with the feathered ones, though.

One of our students traveled to the coast following Katrina; a new student is his cousin from there. Another distant cousin from the coast has now become our after-school care provider. Their loss and the decimation they have seen to family homes have left them shaken. We don’t teach our children to try to understand such things. Instead, we teach them to be squirrels. Do they feel a raging emptiness inside because sin has revealed itself so starkly? Then claw, slash, dig, and grab at God’s Word. Listen to what it says. Then simply confess and believe it. The experience of devastation is not the reality of God’s providence.

Job 10:12 You have granted me life and favor, and Your care has preserved my spirit.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”

What does this mean? … “He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life… He defends me against all danger… All this He does out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey him. Amen!” (SC, 2,2)

We would all do well to be as squirrels – even to be considered varmints and thieves in our hungering and clamoring for Christ’s Gifts, rather than allow anything to stand the way of receiving what the Father would give us in His Son’s Name.