I am driving. On my left I pass a “Pick Your Own Raspberries” farm. Years ago, I took my sons to this very farm. It was one of those Stuart Little moments of promise, tin pails knocking against knees. They took off running.
I could hear the buckets ahead of me as the boys clanked up the rows of canes looking for a place to pause and pick. “Over here!” they called. I rounded the corner, and saw what they were oblivious to: a very angry woman three bushes from them.
Berry picking, to her, was terribly serious. My idea of sticky handed kids licking berry juice off their fingers (which they were doing) and her idea of competition over who would get the best berry-picking bushes couldn’t have been more opposite. I ignored her as best I could.
I drive past the farm today, alone, and turn south. The roads in this part of town are an odd mix of rural and city. Gas stations, a large high school, homes, and a small clapboard church with a slide-letter sign on the front lawn all meet the dirt shoulder. The church sign changes weekly. Today the words say “God sees everything. Be Afraid.”
Across the street from the sign slouchy teenagers, outside on class break, drink over-sugared sodas pumped too full of caffeine. Hair hangs in their faces except when they throw their heads back to laugh. Some of them drag heavily on cigarettes, already adept at the stylized mannerisms they’ve copied from ads. A boy and a girl, both impossibly thin because they’ve grown so-suddenly tall, drape on each other like two wet shirts on a single hanger. They kiss.
I think about the sign and wonder if it is meant for the high school kids, though I doubt it. I wonder if any of them are doing drugs, having sex, driving too fast, or drunk, or without their seatbelts. Are any of them are stealing, cheating, lying? “God Sees Everything,” the sign said. “Be afraid.”
I drive on, listen to the radio. It drones news:
The last of the Bulgarian dancing bears are in sanctuary, their freedom purchased. Lifelong they were forced to stand on hot coals, shifting their weight back and forth in a futile attempt to cool their paws. Thus, they learned, with a metal leash-ring inserted in their snout, to “dance”.
God sees everything.
The West Bank simmers and sparks mayhem, electric as a live wire in rain.
Snipers are bent to the ground in Iraq – ours, theirs – pointing guns at each other as they have been told.
In Darfur, children with bottoms as sharp and thin as elbows balance, hungry, on their feet in the sun.
The Lark Bunting population in Colorado is down, since the 1960’s, by 64 percent. We cover the birds’ grasslands with driveways.
We yell, too often. We take too much for ourselves. We are shut down, turned off, or simply absent from each other. We lie. We judge. We cheat. We steal. We are not always good. In my life, mistakes, like planks on a wharf, lay a path over what quickly becomes very deep water. Sometimes I am not good at all. Perhaps I should quake in my boots.
I think again of the raspberry-lady and her view on berry-bush entitlement– how we could think so differently about the same thing.
Considering all the nonsense of The-Crazy-World-Today, my sentiment is not unlike the church sign. I’d just add one word, one hope, one saving grace: God Sees Everything. Be not afraid. Sometimes we mess up badly. But, being afraid just makes our mess deeper, darker, and more hopeless. God isn’t vengeful, people are. He doesn’t try to scare us silly to control us, people do.
Big Bad Scary Guy is not a role that suits God. He’s better suited for love, peace, gentleness, forgiveness, do-overs. When we cry, He’s beside us weeping. When we run away, He’s far ahead keeping eye. When we hide, He’s all around us, waiting.People who try to scare you into hopelessness or repentance? Ignore them as best you can.
