I rather like frogs; actually, I really quite fancy them. (No, not to eat!)
Along with the crickets, they sing me to sleep at night, and keep serenading me in the pre-dawn mornings on the patio before work. Bob, my biology-professor husband, likes them also, but has a much more practical bent toward them. Whereas I always want to catch them, pick them up, look at them eyeball-to-eyeball, the prof always says, “leave it alone, it’s a scared little creature”.
How does he know if it’s scared? (Turtles, on the other hand, right, I know what they do…) Besides, as far as I’m concerned, one of a frog’s life functions is to let me pick it up. So there.
Of course, then there’s that old truism of having too much of a good thing (which doesn’t apply to chocolate, naturally.) As much as I like the jumpy little things, one at time is enough for me.
Unlike Pharaoh.
“Then frogs overran the land and even invaded the king’s bedrooms.”
Many people know the back story, how Moses was telling the Egyptian king that it was (past) time for God’s people, the Hebrews, to leave slavery and go worship in the wilderness. Of course, the plot continues to thicken, as does the water in Egypt (with blood), as Pharaoh continues to waffle on his commitment.
This one about frogs, though, is hilarious.
Once, finding one of these little guys in our backyard got me so excited. I actually brought it into the house to show Bob, who was still in the back bedroom.
In bed.
(He’s rather used to these things by now.)
However, the only way that critter could have gotten into my house is by my invitation. And I imagine that Pharaoh’s palace was, if not impregnable, at least fairly unaccustomed to such visitors. Especially his own royal bed chamber!
Here’s what gets me. God can use the most unlikely pieces of His creation to get into the highest and most intimate places of power. To disrupt, retool, redirect. It may seem off-limits to me, but nothing—absolutely nothing—is off limits to God.
Not even Hell.
(Which includes even my own personal hell, BTW.)
Of course, reading the full account of the famous plagues in Exodus, it’s obvious that God was in serious communication with His friend, Moses.
And there’s the rub—communication with God. Learning what’s on His heart, praying His kind of prayer, and watching “all Heaven break loose”, as my pastor likes to say. Prayer can leak into places and palaces and the intimacies of a person’s heart like nothing else can.
And whodathunk that something so seemingly small and insignificant as a frog (or a prayer) could get such attention, (especially when there are so many of them?)
Psalm 105:30 Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved
INSPIRATION with an ATTITUDE 