Just a Grasshopper Like Us

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This little story was written for our Chapter 3 Christmas Concert this week.  I knew I’d be reading it out loud, and so it is written with that in mind.  In Charles Dickens’ day, many people were illiterate.  Novels were often read out loud in public squares – and were often written in in several pieces.  A couple chapters at a time would be released in publication, crowds would gather, and a reader or orator would read the books aloud.  Therefore, much of Dickens’ writing pays stylistic attention not only to the eye of the reader, but to the ear of the listener as well.

In other words, you write differently when you know it’s going to be read aloud.  Just a Grasshopper Like Us was written to be read aloud.   The punctuation is designed that way.  Wording.  Paragraph breaks.

Also, it’s unpolished.  It was written in 15 minutes.  I like it.

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Isaiah 40:22 (NLT)

God sits above the circle of the earth.  The people below seem like grasshoppers to him!  He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them.

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As a grasshopper, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things.  I’ve seen friends get stuck upside down on tall blades of grass.  I’ve seen birds snatch family members.  I’ve even seen crickets laugh and caterpillars sneeze.  I’ve seen a lot of crazy things.

My name is Bob, by the way.  Bob Hopper.

Out of all the crazy things I’ve seen though, I’ve never seen anything as crazy as when HE came into town.  Yeah, we’d heard the stories about how his mom had gotten pregnant before she was married – which is a HUGE deal for us grasshoppers – and about how he was born unexpectedly while his parents were taking part in the Great Hopper Census of Green Leg County.

We’d heard bits and pieces of there being something special about him.  Ya know, the usual “Grasshopper-Who-Would-Be-King” sort of deal.  Then we didn’t hear much about him at all.

Well, there was that one time that my wife, Hilda – Hilda Hopper – had said his parents actually forgot about him for 3 days, leaving him behind at the big, annual Hopper Hoopla Party.  I mean, really.  How do you forget your nymph?!

That’s when rumors started that his parents were probably  ‘grass-smokers.’  Another unfortunate and HUGE deal for us grasshoppers.

So we’d almost forgotten about him by the time he showed up again.  He started giving little grasshopper speeches at First Church of The Maple Leaf and then at Insect Community Church – and sometimes he would just start talking nonsense out in the public fields and bushes.

He’d talk to us about the great dangers to the way we were living.  He told us someday a swarm would come that would wipe us out if we kept on the way we were.  He spoke passionately about an escape hatch that he knew about and only he could provide.   He began describing a new way to live.

This, by the way, never goes over well with us grasshoppers.

We prefer life the way it always has been.  And we’re not easily duped into believing silly things.  One time, my cousin, Marvin – Marvin Hopper – started telling people that he was actually a Praying Mantis – just to make himself appear more spiritual – but this didn’t fool anyone.  We didn’t believe Marvin and we weren’t about to believe this crazy grasshopper.

Even though some of his words were compelling, most of us weren’t buying in.  But some hoppers were.  Some hoppers were selling their roots and changing everything about their lives.  These hoppers said if we didn’t change and believe, we’d be in trouble.  And this is where it got really crazy.

This grasshopper started saying he was actually God.

We couldn’t take any more of it.  A bunch of us brought him before Grasshopper Court and had him sentenced to a good beating.  They brought the Dung Beetles in for this.  They’re particularly good at beatings.

Long story short, this crazy Hopper was talking love, hope and a way out – up until the time they put him to death.  Even more weird, some of the hoppers that’d been following him claimed to have seen him alive and well days later!  They claimed this proved he wasn’t just a grasshopper, but the God he’d claimed to be.

But c’mon.   How absurd would it be that God would make himself a grasshopper just like us – to show us the way out?? Crazy really.

Sometimes late at night though, when the Mrs’ legs start twitching and they startle me awake in our little nest, I start thinking about that grasshopper.  I stare up in the sky at the stars and think.

I’m thinking tonight.

The stars are stretched out over us like a huge tree.

I feel smaller than normal.

I wonder – hypothetically speaking – if there was a God, how he’d even connect with us in this huge world, if he wanted to.

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I’m the Blue Cheetah

Call it a messiah complex gone mad, but my compulsion to save everyone in the world just went feline.  Yes, feline.

When you’re in the business of saving people’s lives – ya know, like policemen, firemen, doctors, etc. – it’s easy to develop this complex.  You start to think you were made to be a savior.  But it’s only a matter of time before you realize that while you may have saved a small town from a burglar or an elderly couple from a burning home or a teenage boy from a gunshot wound, you can’t do much about saving their soul.

So that’s why you consider becoming a counselor or therapist or maybe even a pastor.  Maybe then you can help save something deeper than nice hair, chiseled abs, or dentured smiles.  But you soon discover the blurry line between helping people and trying to play “God” in their life.  Even I wouldn’t want to assume the role of playing God.

No.  I want to save people in a more unique way than someone in civil service – and yet more tangibly than someone in the clergy.

That’s when it hit me.  I needed to become a real-life super hero.

Yeah.  I know they don’t really exist.  But I’m rich.  I’m creative.  I’m a little crazy.  A little melancholy.  A little adventurous.

I’m the Blue Cheetah.

Tea With McNair and Monkeys

I’m so glad I’m not a monkey.  My friends would be so boring.  And irritating.  Especially, if they get flinging.

My friends are amazing.  They do what monkeys can’t.  They create.

I’ve got friends that are writing music, making beats, creating ministries, taking photographs, styling hair, making films, doing poetry readings, punk rocking, fashioning clothes, starting businesses, lighting stage environments, building sets, acting, singing, drawing, designing, architecting, orchestrating, and writing novels and articles and devotional books.

Check out an old friend and huge creative/spiritual influencer on my life, McNair Wilson (his Tea With McNair blog is priceless!).  McNair recently wrote about us and monkeys:

“While you and I will most certainly become frustrated while making a simple sketch with pencil, brush, guitar or keyboard, the monkey will pick, peel, and masticate thinking only of whence cometh her next banana.

We were given (nay, created with) a particularly expansive tool box—filled with gifts, and dreams, and a few extra genes. We are—each of us—magical and unique to the animal world.

Let us enjoy our ape, deer, dog, puppy, guppy, and winged neighbors. Let us protect them as we can. But we must create, invent, dream. Creativity is in the human DNA. It is who we were made to be.”

For a healthy injection of creativity and inspiration… go grab some Tea With McNair.  And make sure you grab some with your Creator too.

I’m a Puke Magnet

Okay, so the lesson from our SHRED winter trip that the Lord really wanted to communicate was that I’m a puke magnet.  10 Vans driving up to Big Bear and mine is the only one with two pukers on it on the way up the mountain.  Mine was the only cabin all week with pukers.  Thursday involved trapsing through the ice at 3AM in my boxers to find Pepto, Kaopectate, or even human corks if I could find them.  They don’t make those in junior high size apparently.

After a high schooler clogged the toilet in our cabin, the puke came.  I would have hated to be that toilet.

Even my laptop smells like puke.  It got nailed 30 minutes from home just when I thought we were in the clear.

We’re not sure what started all this.  Bouncy vans.  Mountain roads.  Mystery camp pot pie.

Maybe Jesus started it.  A newly discovered spiritual gift that only I possess… the gift of puke extraction.  They thought it was dormant or deceased like tongues, but what does John MacArthur know?  Puke extraction is returning as a major spiritual gift.  Encouragers move over.  Mercy-givers step aside.

Puke Extractors are risen.  We are risen indeed.

You’re Attractive, So I’ll Vote For You

So I was driving in to work this morning and listening to a prominent AM radio talk show. The topic of discussion was politics (as usual) and some of the republican and democratic candidates in play. After much scintillating analysis, the host posed the question, “So based on looks alone, who would you vote for?!?”

I know they were kidding. The question is interesting though. Look at the candidates: Mitt Romney is attractive, but in a slick car salesman sort of way. Mike Huckabee kinda has that chipmunk-trapped-in-a-politicians-body sort of look. Fred Thompson looks like your grandpa. Rudy Guiliani – all forehead. Hillary – looking more like Bill each day. Barak Obama – kinda like Tiger Woods and Joel Osteen had a baby.

So, based on looks… I have no idea who should win. Yes, there are other candidates, but still not much help in the looks department. So what do we do? Possibly, ignore looks as a major element in deciding who should be president next?

Probably. It was the Lord who told Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7 that His major criteria is the heart of people, not the outward appearance to which man is so attracted. Most of us have been around long enough to have realized that there really is no correlation between attractive people and amazing hearts. I’ve seen less attractive people who have tremendous hearts and influence. I’ve seen ugly people with ugly hearts. I’ve seen beautiful people with ugly hearts and beautiful people with beautiful hearts.

As I see it, there really are no ugly people outwardly – especially when their hearts are for the Lord. Our outward appearance is a phenomenal crafting of the almighty God, but our hearts are the real Sistine Chapel of God’s creation. Let’s wake up and focus there, okay?

And as soon as Brad Pitt runs for president we can all finally turn out to vote.