“Thankfully, we have a God who does not quit being God when the situation is bad.” (Daniel Brown)
I have two small ornamental ponds in my front gardens. Two or so feet wide by maybe four feet long, they merely are for decoration with a bubbling fountain in each’s center. For as little as they are and for having nothing in them but the fountain, they require a lot of maintenance, which includes skimming them daily from the day they’re opened, usually around Memorial Day, to the day they’re closed, usually the day after Halloween.
So, as I stood there the other day skimming the leaves and debris out of them for what felt like the umpteenth time this year, I watched a cricket swim around, totally unable to get out. Quite typically I find a half dozen of them dead in it on any given day late in the summer and through the early fall. Lately, this has me wondering why they continue to jump into the water over and over again when they see their fellow crickets already in there dead or desperately trying to get out but unable to do so.
The more I pondered this as I skimmed my ponds, the more I realized this is a lot life my life. How many times have I jumped into some pond I couldn’t get out of on my own? Countless. All those “beautiful bubbling waters” I’ve often dived into throughout my life where each have led to numerous mishaps, missteps, and some almost to the brink of my death.
Jobs, relationships, addictions, and more where each began with me staring transfixed into some bubbly fountain of perfection I believed they had, that the answer to all my life’s problems was somewhere within their depths. Only to discover me struggling to get out of their grasp eventually, clinging to some wet side of their murky walls that had now become my prison, until I was forced to cry out for help to escape.
While these crickets have me on most mornings saving most of them from sure death by skimming them out of there, many still never make it. Thankfully, I can’t say that of myself when it comes to all my pleas for help. Because God most assuredly has saved me time and time and time again, day after day after day after day, from one alluring pond after another that I’ve quickly jumped into, thinking that happiness was somewhere within its depths, when it never was probably from the start.
I’m just glad I can say that God has been there for me repeatedly to skim me out of places I never should have been swimming around in the first place.
Dear God, I know I’ve repeatedly jumped into one pond after another that I was never meant to jump into in the first place and have often been unable to get out of on my own. Thank you for always being there for me to skim me out of each of them and thank you for knowing you’ll be there again for me when I most assuredly will probably fall into yet another at some point in my flawed humanness of life.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
