Cricket Theology

Hi everybody,


Thanks to all of you who have contacted me and said you were reading the blog. I enjoy hearing from you!

About 3:45 am the other morning, I was awakened from my sleep by a very loud voice, "MOM!" Trying to fight my way into reality, I half sat up and once again that voice from across the hallway. "MOM, WHAT IS THAT?"


Now one thing you must know about me. I am the biggest scaredy-cat in the world. Especially after dark. That kind of yell is enough to have me instantly in burglar, kidnapping, stranger-in-the house mode. (I blame my brother. When we were children, he used to tell me that at midnight he turned into a wherewolf, and he would come out of the closet to get me. Trust me, I used to lie in bed with my eyes glued to the closet--petrified!!)


Heart beating wildly (with a normal heart rate of 59, beating wildly for me is 75) I struggled to make sense of the "THAT". I could hear IT, and thankfully I was quickly able to identify IT because I had heard it once before.


A cricket in the house.


Now, I am one who loves to sit outside after dark and listen to the night sounds. In fact, probably four nights out of a week, you will find me sitting outside under the stars saying my prayers before I go to bed. I love the moon and stars and the night bugs.


You know how loud those night bugs can sound. However, thousands of night bugs outside in the big, wide open space are nothing compared to ONE cricket in the house.


I am serious. It is incredible. The two times this has happened to me, I have been amazed that one little bug can create such a ruckus.



For those of you who don't have old, buggy houses I will assure you of this...once the cricket wakes you, you will not go back to sleep while he is singing. It is more disturbing than the smoke alarm going off.



So I dragged my weary body out of the bed and went in search of the cricket. It was easy to narrow the noise down to the bathroom right beside our bedrooms, but as soon as I stepped into the bathroom, Mr. Cricket went silent and my bleary eyes just couldn't focus in the rudeness of the light to find him.


I crawled back into bed and thankfully, he decided it was close enough to dawn to muzzle it and we heard nothing more.

Until....

...the next evening.


Just as the house started darkening for the evening, Jason and I both heard it loud and clear. The unmistakable chiiirp, chiiiirp, chiiiiirp.


Once again, we found ourselves in the bathroom and once again, Mr. Cricket fell into silent mode at the sound of our footsteps. Except this time, I knew we had to find the little critter or we were in for a looooong night.


I checked around the tub, sink, windowsill, on top and underneath everything. Before long I was crawling around on the bathroom floor on my hands and knees. At this very moment, my brain says, "There's a devotion in this situation somewhere".


I have a weird brain.

"The true test of a person's spiritual life and character is not what he does in the extraordinary moments of life, but what he does during the ordinary times when there is nothing tremendous or exciting happening." Oswald Chambers

I have been debating as to whether crawling around on the bathroom floor looking for a cricket and wondering to myself just when I last cleaned the bathroom floor could be considered an ordinary or an extraordinary moment of life.

You ladies will agree. It's ordinary. On any given day, we are "called" upon to take care of a myriad of situations that could suck any bit of "Importance" out of our psyche. Just when we feel like we are all put together, we have to pull out the plunger or clean up the puke.

The cure? Sing anyway. Praise God anyway. That's what the cricket does!

I did find the cricket. The linoleum on the floor is loose and I lifted a corner of it and there he was. I personally escorted him back outside to his own world once again.

That cricket belongs outside under the night sky, in the grass, with a million other crickets. However, for a couple days of his life he was stuck under my bathroom flooring, all alone, not a blade of grass nor a star in sight. Any yet he sang his little heart out, because that is what God designed him to do.

We belong on streets of gold, in mansions too large to measure, surrounded by a billion angels, with our Father, singing, laughing, swimming, living eternally.

However, for a few "days" of our life, we are stuck here in the muck, separated from the environment we were meant to be in and from a family we have yet to meet.

Sing anyway. Because that is what God designed us to do.