Bugs & Floods
We explored space this morning, and learned the difference between meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites. Puck studied an image of a melted meteorite landed in Australia, composed partly of nickel.
“Mom? Did someone just toss a coin out of a space ship and it turned into that rock when it hit the earth?”
Puck beamed down at me from the tree in the front yard under cold sunshine one hour before lunch.
“Let’s take a walk, Mom. You need exercise so you can wash all those dishes.”
My son – the unintentional male chauvinist. The dishes were already scrubbed, but we tried a walk anyway, until we noticed that the back tire of his bike needed pumping.
Puck tromped up from the basement, heaving the central rod of the Christmas tree.
“This will work to blow up the tire, Mom! Come on! Let’s go!”
While Puck downed a bowl of peaches and green pepper with lunch, I read onwards of the atrocities of European colonization of the Americas, including unexpected and sobering statements such as…
“The Pilgrims and Puritans sold the survivors of the Pequot War into slavery in Bermuda in 1637.”
And other more horrifying things.
I scruffled up the energy to give Puck that second-attempt walk in a more balmy afternoon. I was all prepared to do it after I removed the pork cutlets from the oven as Puck waved off more neighbors from his perch in the still-green leaflets of whatever that particular sprouting specimen is, exactly. I hunkered the everlasting peach-colored book bag over my left shoulder, giving the right one a break for awhile, and we took off in our wellies under extended sunshine and late afternoon blue skies. I let us cut across the unused fields behind the neighborhood. As far as I know, no one has used this plot since… well, maybe since the Indians and Pioneers walked it. Grasshoppers snapped out of the tameless grasses, slapping our hands like rubberbands. Puck distracted himself with weed patch after weed patch, rock after rock, snake hole after snake hole.
Yes.
I did allow us to trespass in snake territory to avoid the long way around.
The library provided the opportunity for Puck to survey the glass candy counter. So many choices. He finally directed himself to the patch of ring pops in the top right corner, of which he chose the emerald option. I took the Kit Kat, and handed over a well-run dollar, twenty-five.
What waited for us at home… wasn’t as pleasant. I guess it only takes a few seconds to initiate disaster anywhere, and when I found myself disinfecting a soundly flooded bathroom and basement floor, I was thankful, at least, that the water flow had shut off on its own.
I recovered at the dinner table while Puck soaked up more adventures in small town Odyssey over a plate stocked with pork, cheese, and cucumber, with a cold cider on the side.
We took a “flashlight walk”, the three of us, down the street past the college kid with the Bandana’s BBQ bag, waving back to Puck as he walked up the driveway, back to the field to hunt for arrowheads in the weeds while coaches yelled drills to football tikes under egg carton lights across the street.
Thought of the Day
Why do “we” automatically assume that praising God in Heaven for all eternity should equate singing in a church choir concert that never ends. I wonder if “praising” and “glorifying” can mean more than “just” everlasting prostration. The way we see it here at least. If John Piper is true, glorifying can also equal rock climbing, eating a pizza, and traveling in Crete. There are the unlimited possibilities, ranging from blue to white, provided they are “performed” for the correct reason. It’s not like trying to pass a despised 1300’s nautical colonization test – if that exists. You either love what you do and thank God for it, recognizing that ability or enjoyment as a gift, and not an idol, or… you don’t. So I wonder if the new heavens and the new earth will also employ the joys, which can be a form of worship and praise, of star gazing, deep sea exploration, and baking pies. Maybe that’s all too spartan in comparison to what’s coming. But if that thought is compelling just in that shell right now, I can’t even try to imagine what the real thing is going to be like.