I See A Big Raw Frog

Once, when I faced the unpleasant duty of forgiving someone I did not want to forgive, my long ago friend Poke McHenry, a popular newspaper columnist, offered me spiritual counsel.

“John,” Poke said, “When there comes a time in your life when you absolutely have to eat a live frog raw, it’s best not to look at it too long beforehand”.

Well, for six or eight weeks now I’ve been looking at a frog.

Poke was right.

Eating the thing doesn’t get any easier by taking my time looking over the problem from every angle.

Therefore, I’m proud to announce that this past week I have eaten the raw frog.

My current frog relates to a book project I needed to restore after my hard drive crashed destroying hundreds of pages of work. I avoided the project for as long as possible but yesterday I completed reconstructing 246 pages of lost text.

This restoration has taken me all week long.

Because I hesitated to tackle the project for so long, it grew larger daily.

Eventually I faced eating an elephant-sized frog.

Still do.

All those 246 pages must be reformatted manually, one paragraph at a time.

I shriek!

But, as Jesus said, “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof”.

I’m not to borrow tomorrow’s troubles, but take care of today’s.

I remember telling my children when they were in school and faced a swcience project assignment that overwhelmed them –

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

So I find that I can’t look at this manuscript too long and that I need to eat my own words one bite at a time.

That’s where I am now.

The next step in the project daunts me, but I’ll tackle it.

Who knows, I may develop a taste for raw frog.

Yesterday my daughter Jennifer drove me around for some errands. We enjoyed lunch at Dave’s Diner talking about dog training. Afterwards, she bought me, among a basketful of other things, nine new goldfish to add to our aquarium.

They’re beautiful.

Yesterday also I learned ,from a blogger in Great Britain, about a huge religious meeting taking place a few miles south of here (everything in Florida is a few miles south of Jacksonville). I checked out several websites related to this event.

I’d approached those sites anticipating something good.

But the more I read about this event, the more creepy crawly I felt.

I see that event promoters can arrange flight and hotel reservations for people who attend the meetings. They recommend restaurants which offer special discount rates to attendees. They promote fainting at a leader’s touch, physical healings, book sales, tv reviews, DVDs and— Can I be reading this right???--Encounters with angels,.

A bunch of people urge others to travel to Florida to see God in action.

And people from all over flock to this thing in droves.

As I read the material, listened to sermon excerpts, and viewed videos, that creepy crawly feeling increased.

Something Jesus said kept running through my mind:

“If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not…Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, Behold He is in the desert, go not forth. Behold He is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

“For as the lightening cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west; so shall the coming of the Son of man be”.

Humm… That puts a different light on things happening downstate.

God breaks in where we are at this moment.

We need not travel anywhere to meet the omnipresent God.

But what about seeking God?

If the Scripture teaches me anything, it’s that God seeks me a whole lot more than I seek Him.

So, do I intend to drive even a few miles downstate into the desert of south Florida?

No.

So anyhow, I see I have this real big frog on my plate….

It’s looking back at me.