Today I decided to take advantage of the lovely sunny warmth even though there were various task calling out to be done inside. I’ve found that I can let lovely days go by in the Summer without much thought because the next day is expected to be more of the same, how many lovely days have I wasted not being out in Abba’s creation in order to accomplish stuff inside which really could wait for a rainy day or at least till after the sun has gone down? Yet here we are in the first part of Nov. with lovely temps in the high 60’s and I feel impelled to go out and celebrate the day because well tomorrow might bring snow. Yes, I said the dreaded word; actually I got news from friends in Md. that the white stuff had already fallen up there, though thankfully it didn’t last long. Last long, now there’s the rub as Shakespeare put it. We as a human race can endure much if we know that it will not last long. Yet as followers of Messiah, we are called to endure hardship like a soldier (2 Tim 2:3), endure all for the sake of others (2 Tim 2:10) to endure afflictions (2 Tim 4:5), enduring correction shows you are a child of Abba’s (Heb 12:7), and lastly for my list but not leastly, Matt 10:22 to endure to the end and you will be kept safe. Endure in the Scriptural sense of the above verses means to stay under. In other words don’t ditch your journey when it gets rough, don’t stop short of the finish line, don’t’ cop out on your purpose. Another predilection that we humans have is to do what I’ve just done, jump from fall to winter and already start dreading what has not yet happened, skipping over what might prove to be a delightful season which will allow me to ‘endure’ the cold time.
So I went walking. I noticed the trees are turning a bit more, a couple of big ones right across the road are turning yellow and are quite lovely. I noticed little flowers still peaking out through the fallen pine needles. One particularly caught my attention; it was one of those small daisy looking flowers; it was sitting right by a downed pinecone. This was a striking contrast to me. (Let me digress a moment and say I was not raised around Pine trees. Yes, Texas has Pines in that very different part of Texas to the east, but I’m Central Texas born and bred so we don’t have Pines and we really don’t have fall. A few bushes might turn colors but Live Oaks, Mesquites, and Cedars don’t turn colors nor do they normally lose their leaves. And let’s face it if you wait for the weather to tell you it’s not still summer you will find yourself on a rollercoaster of a cold front followed by 80 or even 90 degree temps and you will end up skitzo. Hence my fall experiences are not based on past memories of glorious fall colors so if I say this fall is kinda ugly it’s a comparative analysis of how it has looked here in previous years.) Okay a flower with a downed pinecone struck me as odd a Spring/Fall anomaly or seasonal overlap. I thought ,'woo-hoo hang in there little flower don’t let the pine bombs from above you bring you down, use the fallen pine needles as insulation against the cold, fight to survive as long as you can. Just say ‘no’ to the cold to come.’ In other words I wanted it to endure just like I would like the warmth to endure. Just like I would like the good times to endure, however, from experience I know that tough times come but if I’ve stored up the sweetness, the goodness of Abba’s grace while it seems to flow freely I can then be assured I have enough of Ruach’s umph (spiritually speaking the oil of the Spirit) to get me through the night season, the cold times and not only survive but thrive. I also noted that the flower/pinecone represented seeds fallen to the ground via the empty cone and a flower which is fruition of a seed to me a visual reminder of the great promise of the plowman over taking the reaper (Amos 9:13).
I continued my walk and sudden my eye was caught but something even more incongruous (out of place) than a flower and pinecone; a tiny perhaps inch long green worm/caterpillar hanging from a thread descending from a Pine tree ground ward. Why incongruous? Well, I’ve seen spiders repelling down a microscopic thread but a green caterpillar as slender as a pencil lead, doing it, I don’t’ know that I’ve ever seen such in my life. Okay, it’s not a burning bush but I turned aside any way to check out this sight. I watched as it slow descended and as the wind blew it gently back and forth. I thought, I hope you are just trying to reach the ground and not a specific ground zero since the wind is going to make that difficult. When it was a couple of inches above the ground it seemed to pause in its descent, I could see in my mind’s eye transposed over the real scene, this little green dude staring down making a judgment of just how much further it need to go before it could at least grab onto a pine needle or blade of grass that might be sticking up. Then I was brought back to real time reality when the dude seemed to let go of the thread it was hanging from and dropped to the ground. I know two inches might not seem like much to you but it would have been quite a drop for the green dude. Now I wondered, 'did he come to the end of his string capacity? Was he too tired of hanging out? Did he simply decide the wind was not going to allow him to reach the spot he had eyed from above so he might as well get ready for a long crawl?' Since I don’t speak green worm/caterpillar (still undetermined what exactly to call this dude) I will never know his reasons and in any case how many of us actually can say why we react certain ways under dangling wind tossed circumstances? For me it is enough to admire him for obviously looking down from a great height on the Pine tree and deciding not to take the slow way of inching down the rough trunk but to use his gift of string production and start down exposed for all to see in the belief that he was going to make it to Terra firma. Wow, what courage. Isa. 41:14 calls on Jacob (Israel) not to fear but it also has a precursor to the name Jacob, you got it (maybe you do if you know the verse or if you’re good at positing) He called him, worm. This nom de guerre could have been used due to the fact that Israel felt like a lowly worm or Abba was telling them they would not be like mighty warhorses but as the worm, a lowly seeming creature which can wreak havoc on plant life, conquering literally by their teeth; which seems to be the indication from the verses following vs 14. (An important aside to the worm issue is the phrase nom de guerre; it is French and most would say it means a pseudonym aka fake name. Originally however it meant ‘war name’, a practice adopted by the French Foreign Legion. They adopted new names to protect their families’ identities.) Hence the worm nom de guerre was not an insult but a way of saying this small creature which would seem to lack all conquering ability, could by its inherent nature overcome huge areas.
No burning bush today, no heaven opening up and great vision from above but I did learn a lot from a worm.
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