Abundant Life Newsletter - Vol 6.1
A Parable -- by Brigid Nave
As I was in my hour of prayer, I noticed a cricket make its way across the floor towards me. Now the church in which I was praying is a church which, for some unknown reason, is a natural cricket attraction. Every day unwary crickets make their way in, only to be doomed to death because of an insecticide poison. On most days, a person wandering around the church buildings could count a couple dozen crickets collectively.
For this particular cricket, I felt compassion, so I lifted up a prayer that God would lead it to safety. It would have to make it across approximately 18 feet or so, and would have to find the small crack under the door through which it could exit. (Truthfully, I had an ulterior motive in voicing this prayer. If God saved the cricket, I knew He was hearing all my other prayers, too.)
The cricket immediately began its way toward the open space in the center of the room which would be its most direct path toward the door. It was listening to God
God urged the cricket forward, but I understood that He did not force it anywhere. It had to trust Him. The cricket finally made it under the crack in the door and out to safety, albeit by the hardest and longest path. If it would only have trusted the voice of its creator, the journey would have been so much easier. Even more astounding, the cricket actually turned into the room one more time to look back. As if the darkness and death of its past held more appeal than the light and life ahead.
I think God was listening.