Squirrels with Lightsabers

Tonight's message was a continuation about lightsabers, and about the Word of God, a "Sword of the Spirit."  To celebrate this, we were showing a few of the easily found clips of woodland creatures battling with lightsabers.  Super fans have made these over the years, inserting lightsabers into these fights.  In fact, Daddy made the image above to use as a background for those who know how to use a lightsaber.  And then we showed the "Star Wars Kid" from ten or more years ago, the one who - at the time - didn't know how to use a lightsaber or bow staff, and came off looking pretty goofy.

This set up the clip from "The Phantom Menace," where Darth Maul very briefly meets Qui-Gon Jinn in a lightsaber battle in the desert.  A long time ago in another desert, there was another "duel of fates" between Jesus and the devil.  Both were using the Word of God, the "Sword of the Spirit."  Jesus obviously knew it better, as he was the Word of God.

The more time you spend with the Sword of the Spirit, the better you get at it.  That said, we were training kids how to use a Bible tonight, and even gave out this little homework assignment that Daddy reconfigured to have a Star Wars look about it:

It was a long night at KidPak tonight.  Madison was there with the other kids, and it probably went on for too long for the kids.  We got home pretty late.  The repaving of Browns Bridge Road didn't help much - we were stuck in traffic an additional twenty minutes or so, waiting as the one-lane road shifted cars by.  There's been a lot of road and bridge work here lately.

But it was a good day today, of course.  Madison is having a great time at school, and all our worries are really not that much.  We can check on her grades whenever we want to, and we're all in it together, helping her along.  We ordered the yearbook today, one with her name on it.  We ordered one with her name on the front cover, and were laughing about the fact that you could put anything on there, like Madison Superfly.  She was like, "NO!"

It is interesting that you can already buy ads for your child for the back of the book.  Something like $225 can get you a full page ad, which is crazy.  Imagine if all the parents did that.  A quick search online says there are 871 students.  Divide that in half, sort of.  The point is, your book would have FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY SIX extra pages.

Apparently, there must be something wrong with the ordering system.  I mean, surely we can't already go out and buy a full page ad for a sixth grader, right?  For even an eighth grade student, it seems like a full page ad is sort of big, right?

This puts financial pressure on the moms and dads, of course, who want to "keep up with the Jones," and show the world how beloved their little child is.  And our child is beloved, of course.  And a yearbook is forever and all that.  But a full-page ad?  That just seems too much.   Again, imagine an extra 436 pages in your book.

One last thing for today, one that sort of reveals the way this writer feels about animals, and a story that happened here at the house.  I guess it sort of reveals the character of your father, and how I'm just not cut from the same material as a big game hunter or even a high priest.

I could never be a high priest.  I’d see that lamb sitting there, begging me to let it go, and I’d be like, “Be free, little one!”

And I’d go out there to the other priests, and they’d go, “Did you sacrifice the lamb?  The atonement for the sins of all our people?”

And I’d probably mumble something like, “God loves you,” and quickly shuffle towards the exit, trying to act as holy as possible.

****

Where is this going?  There was a snake on our driveway on the way home.  As the garage door was open, it slithered into the garage to get away from the approaching car.  I told everyone to stay in the car so I could deal with it, putting a bucket on it.  The bucket got the tail end of the snake though, so the thing was trapped, visible to all of us, but it’s tail end was stuck under the bucket.

So now the big question:  what to do about it?

I know there is some confusion about “good snakes” vs. “bad snakes,” and I was pretty clueless about this one.  It was so young anyway.  I posted a picture on Facebook, in hopes that the “community” would give me a clear idea.

Several people said immediately it was a copperhead and to kill it.  Some were “good old country folk” that we sort of figured knew this type of thing. There were about two people that said it could be a “king snake,” but that was just based on their internet research right there at the moment.  But the “kill it” crowd was way bigger.

Anyway, it’s still on my brain now, because after looking at the photos I took of this snake, I am pretty sure it was a baby black snake, which was one of the “good ones.”  I saw pictures that look exactly like this one, the same eyes, skull shape and skin patterns.  I made a mistake, and killed it.

You don’t know how this profoundly bothers me.  First of all, it didn’t look black at all - it had markings on the back that made it look like a copperhead or something.  Why was it made this way?

Secondly, I didn’t pray about any of this.  I went to Facebook to get a consensus.  That was dumb.

Thirdly, I willfully killed one of God’s creations because of my ignorance.  I was considering the danger a poisonous snake would present to my girl, and the children in the area, and that fueled me in thinking this was the right thing to do.  But ultimately, I believe I made the wrong choice.

Outside of houseflies and black widows, and the occasional garbage truck-sized palmetto bug that gets flushed down the toilet, I don’t willfully kill anything.  I wish I didn’t have this stupid sensitive heart towards animals.  But here I am still thinking about what I did.  


Anyway, we write about the good and bad here, and although this might not be a big deal to most, it was sort of a bad moment for this writer.  I love animals, and I'm feeling pretty bad about what I did.