DIG DEEP

Excavating the Depths of God and His Glorious Riches

August 8^th, 2022

ADOPTED!

Matthew 6:21, ‘”For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”’ (NIV)

We are learning that there is vast spiritual wealth available to each one of us who call ourselves Christians, who consider ourselves children of God. It is buried just under the surface of the Christian life, waiting to be discovered and drawn out. This month we are headed on a dig, so we can explore, excavate and extract the glorious riches God has for His children.

Day after day, month after month, Teddy sat by the window, waiting for…what? he didn’t know. The hours crawled by like caterpillars, like inch worms, carefully measuring out every moment. Once upon a time, he tried to get to know the other kids, but most of them came and went so quickly, it reminded him of horsing around with a stranger in the lunch line at school, thinking you knew them a little. Then you passed that kid in the hall later in the week, or even the same day, and they didn’t seem like they’d ever seen your face before. So, Teddy learned to keep to his own self.

He liked Miss Myrna okay. She was kind and soft-spoken; better than any of the other house mums at the other homes he’d been before here. She seemed to kind of have a sweet spot for Teddy, he thought, and smiled secretly to himself. She snuck him an extra cookie or muffin from time to time, and she always came to say ‘good night’ before lights-out. She had the roundest face he had ever seen, and even when she wasn’t smiling, which wasn’t often, her face smiled for itself; it was so round. Her eyes and skin matched, a warm syrupy brown, and it reminded him long ago of the wiggly puppy his mummy and daddy had brought home to him, all chocolate brown except for the whites of his eyes and the pink of his tongue. Miss Myrna had a loveable middle, the kind that made squeezing nice, and she smelled like roses. Teddy wished she was his for real mum, or even a gramma would do; someone he could go home with.

All that had gone away, the puppy and the real mum and dad and gramma and his very own room. The day the truck plowed through the intersection next to the Five & Dime as they drove home from church. It had been a very bad day. Teddy still remembered it like it was yesterday. The sound of screeching and metal scraping across metal and the echo of shattering glass that endlessly and nearly drowned out the impenetrable silence where no one said a word ever again. Someday, maybe Teddy would find his voice, but the years seemed to swallow it even deeper. It had been so long since he felt the vibration in his throat and chest, he figured it was buried for good. With his mum and his dad and Grammy too.

He wondered where that puppy went, but because he couldn’t ask properly, he never knew. He hoped someone had gone and rescued him, and he wasn’t still stuck in the house that used to be home, still waiting for his humans to come. Like Teddy was still waiting. He also wondered what became of his clothes and his toys, and especially his blankie, since his clothes wouldn’t fit him anymore, now that he was a big boy. He’d outgrown those baby toys anyway, but he sure would like to hide his blankie under his pillow for late at night when he was sure an elephant had climbed on top of him to sleep, or when he heard about monkeys that jumped on people’s backs, and when the kids said mean things like, ‘What’s wrong, Teddy, cat got your tongue?’ and stupid things like that. His eyes watched the sidewalk, noting the well-dressed people that came and went, sometimes taking one of the kids in the house with them. What Teddy wouldn’t give to be one of those kids.

Teddy hadn’t always lived at this house, with all sorts of other kids of different colors and varying ages. He had been in other homes, and he had also been with other kid’s families, acting all quiet and sweet, trying to make himself just so, where they’d let him stay on. Some of those mums and dads yelled and a few cussed and some acted crazy-like. He was relieved each time those doors closed, or maybe they’d opened; he didn’t know any longer. This place wasn’t too bad, what, with Miss Myrna and all, being sweet on him. It’s like they were trying him on in those other places and he just didn’t fit, like shoes or pants that are too big, too small, not just so. It simply never worked. But maybe if he just might someday fit, he’d find his words again.

Teddy peered through the glass as the day got tired and was morphing into night. Shadows began to hang around as if they were uninvited guests at an exclusive party. His eyes roved over the tall thin man who held open the door for a short squishy-bottomed lady wearing a large smile. Teddy liked to make up stories about the people he watched every day, and in his mind, he began to spin one he thought might fit their oppositeness. It was one of his favorite things to do when he was engaged in his habit of people-watching.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the window, and Teddy realized the very people he was writing a script about were gazing right back at him through the glass. Next to the tall man and the small woman smiled Miss Myrna, pointing right at him, at Teddy, and her beam was contagious; it caught and spread also across Teddy’s face. Soon the man and woman were doing the same thing too, and if Teddy hadn’t felt so special, he might have thought it was very strange. Miss Myrna began beckoning to Teddy, and he thought just for half a second about acting coy, and miming ‘who me?’ and silly stuff like that, but in the end, he was too excited as he bolted for the door.

‘Teddy, I want you to meet some people who are dear to me. This is my daughter and son-in-love,’ Miss Myrna drawled, ‘and they would like to take you home, that is, if it’s okay with you. They’d like to adopt you! That means, Teddy, they’d like to take you home with them and get to know you and earn your trust so that eventually they become your dad and mom, and you become their little boy, and everything they have becomes yours and everything you have becomes theirs.’ For a single second Teddy pondered what seemed weird because he didn’t have a thing, not even a puppy or a blankie he could share with them, but instead, he started nodding his head vigorously, a silly grin eating his face.

At once, a word, a simple ‘Wow!’ fell out of his mouth, and tears clung to his lashes, he was so happy. Miss Myrna clapped tiny hands, hugging him really big, and then said, ‘I knew it! Somewhere inside of you were your words! They just needed a reason to come out and play!’

Psalm 68:5-6a, ‘A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His Holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families.’

2 Corinthians 2:10b: ‘The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God had planned all along.’ (MSG)