Wednesday, November 15, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Rest in peace
The lowly may be pardoned out of mercy but the mighty shall be mightily put to the test. The Lord does not fear greatness.
Just before lunch Jasper and I went out back to dig. He has a set of tools for this, a scoop and a rake and a gardening trowel. We brought along two pieces of wood and began to do some digging. The dirt was not too dry and not too wet.
“Look, there’s a snail!” Jasper noticed it right away. Then there was another one. “Is there a body in there?” I asked.
“Nope. I don’t think so.” Jasper’s words are not always clear. But he can say “nope” with the best of us.
“Let’s give them a Christian burial,” I said. So Jasper dug a deeper hole. We uncovered a small tree root near the surface and it tore when we pulled on it. I pulled it up in the air, and it became our grave marker. The little white snail shells were ¼ inch across. They had been empty for awhile, I guess. But why not bury them well?
We filled the hole with our dug dirt. I prayed a short prayer. Jasper says he only prays on the inside these days.
“Hey! Grandpa! There’s another snail!” So we undug our grave and put the third one in. “Their names are Miles, Jasper and Daddy,” Jasper said.
God himself made the great as well as the small, and he provides for all alike. But a searching trial awaits those who wield power.
“Oh, Jasper, there’s another one!” Tiny, white, altogether dead, it was hidden in the folds of the trunk of the ancient juniper tree, mostly dead itself, that graces our back door view.
“What should we do, Grandpa?”
We decided to let the fourth snail be the observer, guarding the grave of his three brothers and sisters. No name for this fourth snail. Not Mommy. She was too important to be included in this small snail family.
A little while later, after eating corn on the cob and deli turkey slices along with a chicken pot pie which Jasper disdained so I ate the whole thing, we headed home to Jasper’s house and listened to Winnie-the-Pooh stories. “I like the way Piglet makes that noise,” he said. Piglet snorts between every few words when he’s part of the tale.
In the car Jasper ate a still-warm peanut butter cup cookie that he helped Grandma make – he cut up the peanut butter cups and monitored the mixer, while in the living room he was busy with his hammer and nails.
But in the sunny back seat it wasn’t long before he fell asleep. He bragged at lunch that he doesn’t take naps during the day. But sitting in his car seat for twenty minutes, well that’s usually a little too much for him, and he sleeps.
(Wisdom 6, Psalm 82, 1 Thessalonians 5, Luke 17)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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