Splinters and Stings

  The nest was completely shielded by magnolia leaves hanging down like the fingers of a hand. 

A day of minor annoyances had finally gotten under my skin, just like the splinter embedded in my palm.  I dug at it futilely with a pair of tweezers.  I could see it, a black hyphen near my life line, but it was in too deep for me to get hold of the end.

            Determined, I sterilized the tweezers by holding them with the salad tongs in the flame from the gas stove, then went after the splinter again, digging deeper this time, past the threshold of pain.  I drew blood. Did the splinter actually move away?  Teeth clenched, the whole world narrowed to tweezer tip and splinter--I finally had it!

            I held it aloft.  Exquisite relief.  Then my attention, which had been so tightly focused down, sprang outward, passing beneath the trees to where a swarm of gnats danced in the late afternoon sun.  I imagined looking through an as-yet-to-be-invented super-microscope at the swirl of electrons in a complex molecule.  The beauty of the day was given back to me:  my son rode his tricycle; guinea hens moved tranquilly through the Serengeti of the field.

            In Romans, Paul says that God's "invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made."  Yet there are countless things that block that perception.  There is an ascending hierarchy that starts with boredom and mounts through annoyance toward fear, anger and hate, mental states like angels with flaming swords guarding the gate to the Eden of Experience which is all around us, all the time.

            I recently hit a hornet's nest while mowing the lawn.  It was a softball-sized nest on a low hanging magnolia branch which I jostled with my head.  Angry buzz in my ear, then the bright red stab of pain.

            My son, being at the age of imitation, mimicked my howls and flails as I ran into the backyard.  Mercifully, he wasn't stung.  And I was only hit once--but the top of the ear is such a tender place!

            As a veteran of the Grass Wars, I have become a connoisseur of stings.  This one ranked above a wasp but far below a yellow jacket.  It had actually stopped hurting by the next day.

            The memory that kept playing in my head was from the week before:  my son, with his plastic sword, whacking tree branches shouting, "On guard!" I made a special trip to the grocery store, bought a can of Wasp and Hornet Killer, and soaked the nest that night when all the occupants were inside.

            The bodies fell out the next day when I shook the branch, plus some dozen tiny white pupae reminiscent of infants in swaddling clothes.  The hornets had been defending family and home. 

            Fear and anger gone, I noticed the amazing efficiency of the nest's concealment.  It was completely shielded by magnolia leaves hanging down like the fingers of a hand.  I had passed it a hundred times without seeing.

            A moment of marveling, seeing God at work in the wonderful creation of his creatures.

            I snipped the branch and put it the trailer.  A few days later, unloading at the dump, I glimpsed the nest out of the corner of my eye.  Circling flies in the same area completed the mental connection.  I dropped the branch, jumped back and yelled.  Even unoccupied, the nest still had power. 

            I picked the branch up and moved it gingerly into the dumpster.