no greater joy...

I have a classic Charlotte story to share today that has got me to thinking. The story starts with the sound of dump trucks roaring down our street. It seems our neighbor is filling his backyard with loads of dirt. I think this neighbor also owns the property on the other side of our house-- where our beloved mud puddle is. When I'm feeling charitable I'll affectionately call this puddle a pond. This past winter the puddle was deep enough and wide enough to make a great little skating pond for us. The water disappeared through the spring, though, and there's been almost none through the summer. What we now have is a bog. A stinky, squishy, steal-your-boots-right-off-your-feet bog.

Charlotte and Liam love our bog. And they have discovered loads of tadpoles love our bog, too. Charlotte carries a blue bucket around and shows off the tadpoles she collects each day (we make her put them back in the bog when we go inside) and I've seen about ten at a time in that little bucket. So it was panic that crossed my daughter's face when the dump trucks starting dumping dirt on the property with the bog. The trucks have been coming about every half hour all day-- two trucks-- one carrying dirt to my neighbor's backyard, the other piling dirt up next to the bog. Once two loads were dumped beside the bog, Charlotte could take it no longer. She was compelled to act on behalf of those tadpoles. Her heart broke thinking about all those tadpoles that would die when the bulldozer came to fill the bog. We all went out with Charlotte between the dump trucks runs and starting scooping tadpoles from the mud. We probably found about twenty. Our plan was to relocate them to the creek in the backyard-- which with none of us being all that knowledgeable about frogs, it is possible we sent them to a different certain death. In the creek, though, there's at least hope for life.

So this is a classic Charlotte story-- where she's valiantly working to save something. This time her effort got me to thinking. As I was standing there, boggy mud up to the ankles of my rubber boots and my hands running just underneath the surface of the mud hoping to feel that squirmy sign of life, I asked myself, "Am I doing more now for these frogs than I am for souls lost without Christ?" Maybe I'm stretching the analogy here, but that was my honest reflection. I actually felt sorry for the tadpoles knowing that a bulldozer was coming for them. And my brother Zach told me recently that the population of frogs is alarmingly diminishing. I don't know if that is true, but the thought occurred to me, "What if I could save a few?"


Now, I know absolutely that it is God who saves a man's soul-- that I can't woo a soul like a used-car salesman. But God may allow me to pray for and love a person in a way that He uses to woo their soul. But as far as I am able, I wish it were my response to the needs I see everyday-- in my community and in the world-- to think, "Maybe God will use me for His fame? Maybe someone will be saved..." I wish it were my response everytime I see a bulldozer of a need-- maybe a tsunami or hurricane or earthquake or child in foster care or divorce or whatever... may it be my response to say, "Oh! Send me, God! Please pick me! We're ready to go! We're ready to give!" And as I'm begging to be chosen I'm already pulling on my rubber boots and running out the door-- not waiting for a sign that I am chosen, but instead trusting that God will pull me back if I'm not supposed to go. It seems such a common thing to hear someone say, "I'm waiting for God to call me to..." If there's a need and we can meet it, maybe we should be less ethereal and go ahead and get dirty-- just jump into the bog and get awfully muddy. If I understand what Christ did for me on the cross-- that He was there in my place-- I shouldn't consider the mud a sacrifice. In that bog, I trust I'll find as Lottie Moon did, "Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls" (I found that quote in John Piper's "Desiring God")