Outsmarted

"Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought..." Romans 12:3

I love watching the squirrels. They remind me of some people I have known. They chatter at one another and chase one another round and round. They aren't going anywhere in particular but they are in a big hurry to get there.

Sometimes a young squirrel will get up in a tree and start yelling loudly at nothing at all. I think they yell just to hear their voice. When I make a similar noise back to them, they yell right back at me as if in a conversation. If I talk to them in a human voice, they might stop and look at me, as if listening, then resume their yelling when I get done.

Squirrels will chase birds and birds will chase squirrels. It looks like they like to bother each other just for fun. In the spring the squirrels are being chased because they are after the bird's eggs. But they are always busy being busy. I wonder if that's how God sees us, busy being busy with things that don't matter much in light of eternity.

The squirrels bury things in the yard, run zig zagging all over the place and steal my green tomatoes. Then they sit on the fence posts outside my windows and eat them in front of me. It is almost as if they are either taunting me or thanking me for growing their food. Until this year it was never a problem but the ice storm took out several trees including mulberry and some other wild berries. Next year I will have to rethink the way I plant the tomatoes so the squirrels can't get them all. As dumb as it sounds, it may be quite a challenge to outsmart the squirrels. There are hundreds of them and only one of me. They have all the time they want to try to get around anything I try to put up. I think God may have sent squirrels, with their little pea sized brains, to keep us humble. We aren't as great or as smart as we think we are.