A turtle's tale — how like our lives

This morning, this rainy first day of fall, as I headed downstairs to my writing desk, in the hope that a box turtle might visit again after this long record-setting dry spell, I took a bit of tomato with me. Delightfully, there he was, waiting at the door, watching, patient, but then turtles are nothing if not patient. Placing his breakfast on a plate, and the plate in the middle of a larger tray which served as a pool of water both for the turtle to cool off and splash about and drink a bit, plus keep the ants away from the small slices of tomato, I watched as the turtle happily climbed aboard. While his short front feet tipped the tomato dish — the sought-after morsels sliding in his direction — his longer rear feet alternatively pushed himself up and then he rocked back as he ate his breakfast. Like a teeter-totter, back and forth, back and forth, the belly of his shell centered on the lip of the large saucer that doubled as a wading pool, he seemed to enjoy his newfound little game. What a delightful little creature! A couple of days ago a neighbor knocked at our door. Opening her cupped hands, there sat a baby snapping turtle, it's long dinosaur-like tail distinguishing it from the box turtle. Barely the size of a half-dollar, this little guy couldn't have been but a few months old. Like the box turtle at our back door, the hatchling snapping turtle showed up at our neighbor's front door, passing by, heading for the dangerous street. Only 1 in 1,000 newborn snapping turtles survive to reach adulthood. This little guy was lucky enough to make it out of the nest, given eight out of 10 do not, victims of predators like raccoons, skunks and foxes who dig up nests and eat the eggs before they hatch. This little guy, all of 1 inch long, was also lucky enough to make it to our neighbor's front porch, birds and snakes having missed him as he journeyed along. And this little guy, the guy writing this story (not so little, I'm 6-foot-5), is so blessed to have reached this stage of my life, late in life reflecting on that which the Psalmist David wrote: "We went through fire and flood, but you brought us to a place of superabundance," Psalm 66:12. "Burning flames and raging floods," writes Barnes in his commentary (predators of all kinds for the little turtle) to emphasize the extremities to which sometimes we are exposed. Interestingly, the Hebrew word — revâyâh — in Psalm 66:12, to describe this superabundant place on the other side of burning flames and raging floods which often describe this life of ours, occurs only one other time in scripture: "my cup runneth over," in the beloved 23d Psalm, verse 5. Though we pass through fire and flood, burning flames and raging waters, where dwell predators of all kinds, to have discovered a life filled with love; to reside where is found safety and beauty; to have a sense, a realization, a keen awareness that your life has been shepherded all along the way, as if divinely orchestrated and planned — like that of which the psalmist wrote — then you are superabundantly blessed indeed. David Anderson is a retired pastor who writes "to bring hope to people in crises, to bring encouragement to those who've loved much, lost much, and desire to experience the joy of living again."