A Servant's Call
My relationship with God has been growing throughout the past eight years and I'm beginning to feel His presence in a very real way. Quite honestly, it's a bit frightening. For one thing, I've lost all desire to pursue my career. I've lost interest in all of the activities I normally participate in, and I can't think of a thing I want to do. I don't like my job but can't think of no other one I'd rather have. I feel lost, confused and directionless. I have never been in this place before � it feels like a black hole and I feel helpless.
I decide to take this state of affairs up with God since He's the only one who seems to have any control over my life. I tell Him I'm pretty much stuck and need help. I'm thinking this is exactly where He wants me�but I don't like it much. I can't tell you how surprised I was when He his response was to tell me to go on vacation. So, I finally found a time where I could get away from civilization (well, not too far away) and be alone, purportedly to recover stamina and my sense of humor. You see, with all this confusion, I've been pretty hard to get along with lately. I have the good fortune to belong to a family that has a vacation cabin up in the West Virginia mountains. My fortune holds when I discover it will be vacant during my week of vacation, hence making it available for me to hide in.
I arrive early Saturday morning and enjoy two days of music, reading, praying and a lot of sleeping. Monday morning, however, introduces a new challenge. I discover a small bat under one of the director's chairs in the living room. At first I didn't know what it was. I was walking by towards the hall bathroom when I noticed something different out of the corner of my eye. I have terrific peripheral vision, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes distracting. So I look more closely and notice a dark brown shape under the chair.
It's quite small really, about the size of my fist�and I have very small hands. My first instinct is to ignore it. Tiny has the habit, as do most cats, of finding things to play with�it's probably an old sock or something. She especially likes to play with small objects under chair and table legs. My theory is that they like the challenge of labyrinths or mazes; after all, a cat's life is much simpler than that of humans! What I don't get is what they get out of banging their head and other body parts on these obstructions. Or maybe I do get it! I had better quit digressing here or I'll take this thought on and never return to the bat!
So I decide to ignore it, the bat, I mean, and go about my business. After a while, my ever present and acute peripheral vision picks up this brown shape again. It's still there. Well, did I really expect it to move? I really don't know what I expect, but the fact of the matter is that the brown shape is still there and it is beginning to bother me. I came here to rest, not be bothered, so I decide to check it out more closely. Gingerly, I approach the brown shape and look at it from all available angles. It occurs to me that it looks like a bat with its wings folded up. But that's absurd! How would a bat get into the house? Why would it want to be in the house? And if it is a bat and did indeed get into the house by whatever means, how long had it been in the house? More to the point, perhaps, is the question of where it had been hiding in the house prior to my discovering it under the chair. It wasn't there last night! All these thoughts and many more rage through my mind like wildfire. Then I discover that my heart rate has accelerated indicating that I am scared.
Now I have to tell you that, along with my exasperation with my overly developed peripheral vision, I detest feeling scared. I don't mind being scared, I just don't like feeling scared. There's a difference, you know. At any rate, I lasso my fear (not too tightly) and continue my investigation. I am finally able to determine that the brown shape is indeed a bat, albeit a very small one. No longer a benign brown blob on the carpet under a chair, it is now a living creature, and I'm afraid of it.
