No Words Needed
Just ask the animals, and they will teach you. Job 12:7
The ways of God’s creatures are not complex. Using our human thought processes, we try to figure them out in anticipation of their next move. We even do that to each other, and we are complex! Cathy Mayfield (All God’s Creatures) must be related to me somehow because we have similar thoughts.
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The bubble of our creek and the porch swing lulled me as I turned to the day’s devotional reading. A hectic week with my uncle’s progressive dementia exhausted me and gave me constant anxiety. What if he had needs I couldn’t meet? Would I have the time, patience, and energy to keep helping him? I prayed today’s devotions would hold some uplifting words.
Before I began reading, my dog jumped up from his place on the porch beside me, ears alert, and looked toward the trees along the creek. A slight rustling came from one of the trees. Just a squirrel gathering nuts, I thought. I went back to my devotions.
But Kenai whimpered and strained the leash to get a closer look. Something larger than a squirrel was coming down a wide hemlock branch like a kid on a slide—an opossum! The bulk of the grayish critter seemed too heavy to balance on the wiggling branch, but on he went, sliding, then grasping with paws. I thought he’d fall into the creek any second.
As I watched, he wrapped his thin, muscular tail around the limb and dropped, hanging upside down over the creek, his hand-like front paws stretched toward the ground. Then, he let go, and I heard a splash. A moment later, he popped up in our yard from the creek bed and moseyed his way to wherever he was headed.
Not needing written words, God had shown me in the opossum’s forward-moving perseverance while tottering on a flimsy hemlock over rushing water how I could go on—slide through when I can, grasp at the True Vine when needed, hold on with all my might, and drop into the Living Water of Christ when I can’t hold on any longer. Like the opossum, I’ll pop up on the other side and keep on moving on.
Father, thank You for how often Your critters show me how to get through this life. AMEN.
Read Job 12:7-10