Leaping Frogs!

I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from every trouble, and my eye has seen the ruin of my foe.” Psalm 54

Last week I heard a frog croaking, which in itself isn’t all that unusual. We have many cute little green frogs playing around the house out in the backyard. When I’m mowing, I take special care to watch for them as they strive to flee the noisy grass lopper. Just as people fleeing Godzilla or other monsters in the movies, they tend to run or hop the same direction in which I’m going, when they could just as easily hop left or right for a few froggy paces and be out of danger. But, Oh no; they’ve got to do it their way. So I, with eagle eye, keep watch as I walk and mow, and adjust my pace or direction of travel. The grass-lines are more erratic when I do that, of course, but then I remember that the outdoors is their domain. I am but a caretaker and should not fault frogs, snakes, slugs, or lizards for living life on their own terms.

Anyway, I heard a frog singing out in the night, but he or she wasn’t outside. It was calling from inside the house! Before you get the idea I’m going all Stephen King on you, rest assured it wasn’t actually calling from inside the house, nor did it have a homicidal intent (as best I could tell). It was calling from the garage, so I decided to put my frog-hunting skills to the test. I figured it should be pretty easy, for I was a major frog-hunter back in the day. My siblings, cousins, and I would wander ‘round the docks at Lake Cavanaugh where my grandparents had a summer place, and I prided myself on my ability to sneak up on frogs or toads as they sat on pads, logs, or mudflats doing their own hunting (for flies and mosquitos, I presume), and capture them before they even had a chance to elude my wiley clutches.

I always let them go after a minute or so, of course, because frogs and toads aren’t much for conversation. They sit in your hand, blink and, frankly, look pretty bored, so I would relax my grip and when they were good and ready, they’d shift in the palm of my hand, survey the lake, take a lazy hop back into the water and swim away like the creature from the black lagoon.

So, I brought back to the fore my hunting skills as I entered the garage for this battle of wits – this Great Frog Hunt. I wasn’t really hunting the frog to do anything harmful, by the way. Our frogs here are so tiny and inoffensive that a meal of frog’s legs would require about a thousand just to barely serve as an appetizer and, honestly, I haven’t got the time or inclination to provide all those frogs with wheelchairs if I were to do such a thing with them. No, my only interest in the frog in the garage was to find it, rescue it, and return it to the great outdoors from whence it sprang.

Well, that frog apparently has better hearing than I do; it was able to elude not only my clutches, but also my seeing it. Davy Crocket I’m not (apparently). That’s OK. 

That tiny creature with the big mouth has patiently eluded my efforts for weeks, now. It had neither asked for nor expected my intervention, and has been happy to sing me to sleep nightly since it moved in. The beastie simply keeps its trap shut until I tire of the chase, and when I return to my couch, Mr. Toad cheerfully sings its version of the Hallelujah Chorus.

I suspect that if Dear Frog knows the psalms, the one it prays each night is this: “I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from every trouble, and my eye has seen the ruin of my foe.”

That’s all this ruined foe has to say on that from here in this, our valley. He sure toad me off!

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)

Atomic Ants and the Science of Love

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul...everything they owned was held in common. Acts 4

I was meeting with our online Men’s Group and mentioned I was scheduled to receive my second Covid-19 vaccine shot. The first shot four weeks earlier had knocked me for a loop with a slight fever, chills, general body aches, fatigue, and all the other things guys tend to complain about whenever it comes to anything medical. It’s true. You can shoot a guy in the face while bird-hunting and they’ll just walk it off, but stick them with that itsy bitsy vaccination syringe and it’s “pour me into bed and plug ‘911’ into my phone’s speed-dial.” Sheesh.

The fact is I am writing this just hours after having received the vaccine precisely so that I’ll be able to send it off from the grave before the deadline comes and goes. Hey, I am ALWAYS thinking of others!

Anyway, I found myself wondering, all kidding aside, just what it is that prevents people from voluntarily wearing masks and getting their vaccines as soon as they can. I want to be vaccinated and reduce the likelihood of contracting or passing the disease along. I will continue wearing my mask in public simply because I don’t want you – my neighbor – to wonder whether or not I am safe to be around. The issue isn’t my rights, but our community.

The problem with Covid, and most microbial viruses and germs is that they are so darned small. We can’t see them to avoid them. We can’t look at one another and know for certain what contagions we each might be carrying. I did offer one alternative to the men’s group that anti-maskers and anti-vaccers might want to consider. It addresses the size issue, and it is based on science.

We need to bring back outdoor nuclear testing like we had in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I remember seeing a movie that I’m sure was based solely on modern science where atomic testing allowed desert ants to mutate and develop into twelve foot monsters. They were big enough to require machine guns and flamethrowers to deal with them. Well, bring back outdoor atomic testing and wait for the viruses to mutate big enough to whack them with baseball bats or fly swatters! I mean, if we can see the little beasties lolling around like beach balls, we can deal with THEM and go back to our maskless ways.

In the meantime, it seems one key to getting the pandemic behind us is to actually do something even harder: we need to get ourselves under control. I don’t wear a mask for me; I wear it for you. Why? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.” If I bring you a smile, isn’t that loving? If I wear a mask so you don’t get as much salivatory ejecta from me, isn’t that loving? If I obtain a vaccine so the virus has no place to go and no way to get there, isn’t that loving?

The early Church grew quickly in the early days, not because of membership drives or paid advertisements, but because those early followers did something counter-intuitive; they loved their neighbors – including outsiders and persecutors. They didn’t concern themselves with their rights, but when their neighbors were in need, they did all they could to bring relief to their little corner of the dog-eat-dog world in which they lived; their neighbors took notice.

Followers of the Way recognized they were part of a community that didn’t end at their front porch, but included the wider community, including those who did not look, think, or act like them. In a world of “us and them,” they learned to embrace the “we.”

When it comes to masks, consider this. Painters mask off walls or trim they don’t want paint to stain. I, just as reasonably, mask off my face to avoid spraying you with unpleasantries. 

If we follow the science rather than the science fiction, it is quite possible we can slow down or end this pandemic, allowing us all to breathe a little easier here in this, our valley. 

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)

An Empty Tomb -- A Full Heart

 Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with (You) … Collect for Easter Sunday

I don’t talk a lot about sin. It’s all around us, like the air we breathe. There’s no getting away from it. There’s no avoiding it. Even if we deny there is such a thing as sin, the fact is we see the evidence of people behaving badly, and so even if we want to give it a different name (like shortcomings, mistakes, or bad choices), it covers the same territory.

One reason I don’t talk about sin is I worry the minute someone hears the word, they will close their ears and stop listening. No one likes to feel like they’re being judged, or the person talking to them is a narrow minded nincompoop or holier-than-thou prig (all of which may be true anyway).

No, I just think that when we start with what’s wrong, we’ve started from the wrong spot. Yes, we are all sinners. We all fall short of the mark, whether it is the mark we set for ourselves or a mark some one or some One sets for us. Even the Rifleman, Lucas McCain missed every now and again; there’s no shame in that. The only real question we have to answer is what we can do to improve, and then do that.

A friend of mine is a bow hunter, and he went out to a ranch to get in some target practice before hunting season. The first few arrows never came close to where he wanted them to go. Not being an archer, I asked him if his bow had adjustable sights. He just looked at me a moment and said, “No, I just need the target to cooperate and move to where the arrows go.” The rancher said, “No, you just need a larger target (and maybe a bigger barn to shoot at).”

As a photographer, I’ll often move my subject if I don’t like the background or lighting, but I’ve found that mountains, trees, and barns often don’t move. When that happens, I need to find a different time of day or a different place to stand to get the shot I want.

Sin isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Our task is to identify what we’re looking for, what we’re aiming at, and discerning if we need to adjust our sights, move our subject, secure a bigger target, or find a better time and place from which to take our shot.

Sin, for me, you see, isn’t breaking a commandment as much as it is a distortion of who we are meant to be. It’s losing focus on the big picture: Loving God with all we’ve got; loving our neighbor (even when it is nigh on impossible – for with God, all things are possible), and loving ourselves the way God loves us – for God thinks we were worth the ultimate sacrifice.

This week marks the ending of Lent and our final approach to Easter. Once again we will peer into an empty tomb and some stranger in white will say, “The One you are looking for is not here. Go home, for he promised to meet you there.”

All of a sudden, we who tramped around during our Lenten pilgrimage will discover we’re home, and God is there waiting for us. God will have put on an apron and invited us in to feast because, well frankly, God doesn’t look at either sin or sinner. God looks at us. We don’t need to move. God moves. We don’t need to be perfect (or ashamed), for God is perfect and perfectly happy to have us join in the festivities.

The only sin God cares about is God’s SINcere love for each and every one of us. Enjoy your Easter and bask in the warmth of God’s love. Remember, God hung up the bow – God is no longer using us for target practice, and that is good news for everyone here in this, our valley! 

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)