A squirrel taught me a lesson about God today.

God is so unpredictable.  There I was, walking from my dorm room to the business office, just like I have dozens of times before.  This time was different in that it was so quiet.  In the winter, people have a tendency to be inside more, and on a Thursday afternoon, it’s not uncommon for classes to be going on, too.  Somewhere between the library and the administration building, I heard a strange noise.  Had it not been so quiet and still, there’s no way I would have heard it.  Leaves were rustling, but it sounded close by, and not quite like it was just the wind.  Looking up, I saw a pudgy squirrel.  He was pulling dead leaves off the branches of a tree and stuffing them into his mouth.  He’d take a few from one branch, then move to another and another until his mouth was so full of leaves he ran down the trunk of the tree to another and disappeared from my sight.

“Big deal,” you may say, “what the heck does that squirrel have to do with God?”

I’m so glad you asked J

Seeing the squirrel on the way to the business office made me think of how God works.  It’s not uncommon to see Him.  Most people don’t notice Him at all or even ignore Him on purpose, even though they’re pretty sure He exists.  We also, as Christians, see Him around.  We notice Him helping those in the hospital get better by “guiding the hands of the doctors” and “giving them peace and joy.”  These things as well, make our perception of Him fuzzy.  We see Him as one to watch as He works in the lives of others in mysterious and ambiguous ways.  It’s true that He can be called upon to help the sick and soften hearts, but if we be still, maybe we’ll realize He does much more than we see.

We’re used to seeing squirrels running around, rummaging through leaves and chasing each other around.  We come to think of this as normal squirrel behavior but if you think about it, we generally only notice what they do on the ground.  We only see what they do where we are.  How much of their time is spent above us?

We see what God does in our own little lives as He works out His plans.  Perhaps the work God does above us, the things we little notice, have to do with bigger plans.  Maybe above us, He is preparing us for the future.  We don’t notice as much when He protects us by causing the car to stall so we come to an intersection a minute after an accident instead of while it occurs.  We don’t thank Him for letting us fail so we better learn humility.  From above, He orchestrates our lives for His glory – and most of the time, we don’t even notice.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” - Isaiah 55:9