Me and My Squirrel

The war is on!  There will be no peace!  Let the whole world know that I will not relent until the squirrel is dead!  OK, so maybe that’s a bit over the top but I have to confess that I have had murderous thoughts of catching, maiming, torturing and killing a squirrel.  Let me give you the background.

Last week, I went home for lunch and guess what was sitting on the step of my back porch?  Why, one of the biggest ground squirrels you have ever seen!  This dude looked like the before picture for a Xantrex-Three commercial.  And do you know what this guy was doing?  He was eating one of my tomatoes!  Pretty as you please, reared back on his hind legs, with one of my tomatoes in his dirty little paws eating away like he owned the place!  You have to understand a bit about Southern culture to appreciate why this angered me so much.  You see, everybody in Kentucky grows tomatoes, it’s sort of expected if you are to be a part of polite society.  You grow the tomatoes, but you grow them so you can give them away.  The tradition probably started as a neighborly gesture but now you do it as a competition to see who has the best tomatoes.  I have three plants and they are all doing really good, some are just turning ripe and here is this rat scallion eating them.  So, I tried to catch him but he got away.  For a week now I’ve been trying to corner this guy and he keeps taunting me.  He stands on our wall (eating my tomato and just laughs at me with that heinous little, evil, squirrel voice of his). 

I’ve though that maybe this is God paying me back for all the squirrels I’ve killed and eaten over the years…maybe, maybe not.  Today, I looked out and there he was, and you know what?   He had a friend with him.  There were two, tomato-eating, garden robbing, rat scallions, helping themselves to my tomatoes!!!  I went for my gun, but caught myself.  I’d hate to go to jail for shooting in the city limits.  So I set a trap David loaned me.  For all you PETA people, it’s a live trap-no harm will come to the squirrels (until I get my hands on them!-Lighten up, I’m joking).    

Momma Leach didn’t raise her boy to miss an opportunity to teach from practical experience, so here is what I thought about.  That crazy squirrel stumbled upon my tomato plants by accident I’m sure.  But he found them, he tried them, he liked them, he was nourished by them, they were plentiful- so he stays around and gets to them as much as he can.  I think our relationship with God is like that.  We aren’t looking for God, He is looking for us, and we “stumble” into Him.  He sees that He is good, we fall in love with Him, He saves us, we can’t get enough of Him, we make our home near Him, and we enjoy Him immensely.  Pretty soon, we want to share Him with all of our other friends as there is more than enough of God to go around.  Even when the enemy tries to run us away from God or tries to destroy us, we keep coming back to God and bringing others because He is just so good, is easily accessible, and gracious and wonderful. 

I suggest you stay near the Source and bring as many others to Him as you can.  In the meantime, if you want you usual gifts of tomatoes from me, pray that my squirrels develop a taste for something else.  If not, the war is on!!!

Tell me about a time you shared God with someone.