Consider the Crabs

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made... (Romans 1:20)


God speaks to me through Creation. He always has, and I'm guessing He always will. That's just part of the way He wired me, one of the few things I have in common with Annie Dillard and John the Baptist. (I'm assuming JtB was a nature boy. How else could he have managed to live out in the desert all those years?) Whenever I am stressed, I head for the woods or the beach, the two places where I am most likely to hear a clear word from God. I even bought a waterproof Bible so I can lie in the surf while I read.


Last week I was preparing to lead a group of nature lovers on a kayak tour of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (or "MinWir" as we guides say), an evening paddle where our goal is to spot bioluminescent organisms in the shallow waters of the estuary. Just after sunset but before the twilight had faded to black, I spotted something large moving along the bottom of the waters just off the shore where we launch our kayaks. I waded out and came ashore with this beautiful creature:

Yes, it's a hermit crab. I catch a lot of hermit crabs in the estuary, most of them living in the shells of Florida Crowned Conchs or Florida Banded Tulips. Two weeks ago I caught a hermit crab whose shell was the size of a pinto bean -- its legs were as fine as hairs. The average MinWir crab, though, is about 2-3 inches in length, and once in a while I find one the size of my fist. The guy in this picture is living in a barnacle-encrusted banded tulip, but it's difficult to judge his size from the photo, so let me step into the picture with him to give you a better idea of the scale:

My first thought upon seeing this crab was, "I didn't know they could get that big!" Hermit crabs will continue to grow as long as they have bigger shells to move into, and according to my research some species of hermit crab live over 30 years. I would imagine that the older ones have to deal with something of a housing shortage. It takes a long time for a mollusk to grow to the size of a watermelon, after all. While I don't know how long this guy (whom I christened "Gojira" after the Japanese monster lizard) has been living in this particular shell, he was filling it up pretty well and looked about ready for a new home. Where is he going to find one? No one I know has ever seen a banded tulip shell this size before; they aren't just lying around waiting for hermit crabs to move in. And a hermit crab without a home is vulnerable to predators . . . in other words, there are no homeless hermits; there are only dead ones.


As Jesus reminds us in the Sermon on the Mount, though, God has the situation under control. He feeds the birds (Matthew 6:26) and clothes the grass (Matthew 6:28-30), and he provides homes for hermit crabs. That's particularly encouraging to me . . . I'm looking for a home right now and I will confess, the process is stressful. But if I consider the crabs, I'll have an easier time trusting God to work it all out in time.

New Year's Resolutions

New Year's  Resolutions . . . I confess, I gave up on them a long time ago. They seem so contrived, like those jokes that start, "A piece of string walked into a bar." (Really? A piece of string?) The entire nation decides to lose weight, give up smoking, walk three miles a day, etc. etc. etc. So I don't make New Year's resolutions.

Now that January is well underway, however, I am willing to confess that there are a lot of things I would like to do better. So here are the resolutions I would make if I were prone to the habit of making New Year's resolutions:

1. I will try harder not to be so performance-driven.
2. I will . . . hey, wait a minute, if I keep making this list I will be breaking #1. Forget the whole thing.

Maybe next year.

In honor of the season, here's a repost of the "Christmas" chapter from The Carpenter.  Enjoy! 

If you'd like to read the entire book, visit http://www.amazon.com/Carpenter-ImmanuEl-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00ARHXF3U/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

CHAPTER TEN

"We're almost there, Mari."

"I'm sorry, Yosef.  I can't."  She gasped and dug her fingers into my arm.  "Not one more step."

"It's less than a mile."

She glared at me, sweat beading on her forehead.  "Fine, then!" she yelled angrily.  "You can carry the baby the rest of the way!"

What's Wrong with This Picture?

First impressions carry a lot of weight. Although we warn against making hasty judgments ("Don't judge a book by its cover"), the truth is that we do tend to judge things—and people—based on our first impressions of them.

Take this movie I was watching on Netflix, for example: Snow White, a Tale of Terror.  I was in the mood for something unusual, and the evil stepmother was played by Sigourney Weaver (who was admirably creepy in an unorthodox depiction of the most beautiful witch of them all). But any lack of bias I might have had toward the movie itself was destroyed in one of the opening scenes, in which a young Snow White hides from her nursemaid in a graveyard. I do not want to debate the choice of playground locale, which was actually excellent for the genre and tone of the film. But look at this picture and ask why it inspired me to take an hour from my busy day to write this blog:

What the Blazes? Reflections on my TAG, part 4

So there I was, hiking the Paisley Trail through the Ocala National Forest, about four miles from Lake Clearwater and not a soul around. Only an inch or two of water still sloshed in the bottom of my bottle, the windbreaker tied around my waist was covered with sandspurs, and my back had begun to throb with each step I took through the loose sand of the elusive path. Nevertheless, my spirits were high, as was my voice: inspired by the tracks of a large carnivore, I'd been singing at the top of my lungs for about half an hour, mostly in Hebrew.

What the Blazes? Reflections on my TAG, part 3

After two hours of climbing through burned-out longleaf pine uplands, I was covered in burrs and sandspurs, had consumed half of my water, and was no longer appreciating the lesson in path-finding. So I decided to take a mental break. Translation: I worked on my latest novel, the sequel to Brothers.

Last summer, I hit a snag in the plot about the same time school started; the only writing I've done on the book since August is the "frame story" (prologue, interludes, and epilogue), which you can find published elsewhere in this blog under the title "Temptation." But the novel's main plot line stalled out completely while Yisu was dragging one of his brothers across Samaria,

What the Blazes? Reflections on My TAG, part 2

So there I was, hiking the Paisley Woods Bicycle Trail, which had ceased to be a broad, friendly road and had become a (potentially) snake-infested, elusive, uphill-through-tick-country line in the grass. Here's that photo again in case you've forgotten: