“Where’s Goldbug?”  The two year-old was sitting on the edge of the step with the cardboard book open in her hands.  I smiled at the little blonde cutie with the intense look of concentration on her face.  For a moment, my mind went backwards about twenty-five years when the little blonde cutie holding that same book and uttering those very same words was her mother, or just as often, her uncle.  The book is by Richard Scarry, who has written many children’s books, each of them a joy to the eye for the child in each of us.  The particular book I refer to, though, has what I call a hook, meaning that there is one certain thing which captures the children and keeps them coming back again and again.

The artist has depicted all sorts of automobiles and trucks, both fanciful and real, and drawn them into a fun story wherein one reckless driver, Dingo Dog, is chased through the pages by the police officer, Officer Flossie.  I’m not sure if any of the children in my family (even the grown-up ones) could tell you what the plot is.  Each and every time they open up the book, the search is on.  You see, in every scene in the book there is a little character hidden, always in a different vehicle.  He is introduced simply as Goldbug and he is just that…a tiny gold bug.  On one page, he might be hiding in a car being towed away, eyes and whiskers barely visible in the side window.  Flip over the page and he is in his own tiny car, dwarfed by the big fire engines and buses, racing along so close to the ground that he is hardly to be found at all.  Goldbug is by far the tiniest character in the book, actually not playing a part in the plot at all.  He is mentioned a time or two, to remind the kids to keep looking for him.  They don’t need the reminder.

As I said, I’m not sure the kids in my life could tell you much of the plot.  I can’t either.  Whenever the book is in my hands, I’m surrounded by children, all of them vying to be the first to find the insignificant and imaginary little bug.  As soon as he is located and his whereabouts shouted out with excessive pointing and laughter, it is time to be on our way to the next page immediately.  We don’t read the text, don’t take time to examine the interesting-looking vehicles, like the Pickle Truck (a huge pickle-shaped thing) or the Alligator Car (yep, looks just like one); we must instantly flip forward to the following page, once more scanning the windows, the truck beds, or the convertibles for the by-now familiar shape and color.  “There’s Goldbug!”  I’m as anxious as they are to find him and claim the glory of yelling out the phrase.

I consider the experience I’ve had historically with this book and I can’t help but think that Goldbug is actually a “red herring”.  What’s a red herring, you ask?  The red herring myth was begun way back in the early eighteen-hundreds by a political journalist who related, in print, the story of using a red herring, which was actually just a smoked kipper, to draw hunting dogs off the scent they were following.  He used the term derisively about some fellow reporters who had mistakenly reported the defeat of Napoleon in a battle.  The problem is that the story of using the smoked kipper, the red herring, to train hunting dogs is itself false.  No such training method has ever been practiced.  It would seem then, that the red herring is itself a red herring.  Go figure.

The search for Goldbug seems to me to be exactly like the proverbial red herring which draws the juvenile reader (and occasionally, a more mature one) away from the plot of the story, keeping all of us from learning the lesson the author intended and frequently preventing us from even admiring the artist’s craft.  I wonder if that’s not just a little more like real life than we care to admit.  We are so easily drawn away from the pursuit of our goals and dreams, to follow shadows and imaginary prizes.  We have a destination, a purpose, and a plan to get there, but along the way the billboards point to exciting side shows and distractions.  “Stop and see the caves!”  “Visit the prehistoric ruins!”  “Eat our huge steak dinner in an hour, and it’s FREE!”  Enough distractions and stops, and we have forgotten why we started the journey in the first place.  We begin to believe that the side shows are the actual destination, the ultimate goal.  I’m confident that the Author has loftier plans and goals for us, if we’ll just read the rest of the book and keep moving.

The Goldbug search will continue in the years to come for the kids in our house.  I will encourage it.  In real life however, it is to be hoped that Officer Flossie will catch that reckless driver, Dingo Dog, and bring him to justice.  There are places we need to go!

I’ve got my Pickle truck polished up and ready to get me there.  Let’s see if we can keep on the right track together, moving on up the road. 

“Then Hopeful groaned in himself, saying, “Oh, that I had kept on my way!”
Christian:  “Who could have thought that this path should have led us out of the way?”
(In the castle of the Giant Despair from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan~1628-1688)

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
(Will Rogers ~American humorist~1879-1935)

“Mister Whitmore, that piano you sold me won’t play.  You’re going to fix it, aren’t you?”  The exasperated voice at the other end of the phone line proved to belong to a youngish mom who had purchased the used piano from me just months prior to her terse call.  I didn’t bother to correct her use of the wrong name, since I’ve long ago learned to overlook that all too common mistake.  I’ve also found that pointing out errors doesn’t help to smooth ruffled feathers, either.  I asked her a few questions to try and ascertain the problem, but her answers led to more confusion than before.  She told me that the piano had worked fine at first, but that one by one, the keys had stopped working.  When they were depressed, there was a clicking noise and then they wouldn’t go on down to activate the notes.  I knew that sometimes the key bed of a piano could shift because of changes in humidity, but it didn’t make sense that it would happen one or two keys at a time, until most of them were unusable.  It was certainly a poser.  “This is not my problem, it’s your problem!  You sold us a piano that doesn’t work right!”  I assured the out-of-sorts customer that we would indeed rectify the situation for her and told her to expect our technician soon.

I gave the real Mister Whitmore a call and asked him to go out and look at the piano for me.  The Lovely Lady’s father had tuned and regulated pianos for almost fifty years by then.  I was sure that he could find the source of the problem quickly for me.  He chuckled as he heard my description of the issue and told me that he didn’t want to speculate, but he was pretty confident he knew what was going on.  A time was set up to visit the ailing instrument and I awaited his verdict.  The afternoon of his appointment, I was anxious to hear his report.  It was frustrating when he came into the music store, still chuckling.  I hoped that he hadn’t annoyed my customer by making light of her problem, but my fears were for naught.

“Well, all it took to solve the mystery was a little sense,” the old joker quipped.  I didn’t get the joke, so he explained.  It seems that, when the piano keys were removed, between each key was at least one penny…two or more between some of them.  There were a couple of young boys who lived in the house and they had found that the pennies from their piggy bank fit nicely between the ivory keys on the new piece of furniture. They egged each other on until they had no more pennies left in their banks.  Then, every time they were handed another penny or two, they made a deposit.  That explained the clicking sound, as well as what was keeping the keys from being depressed.  Pennies!  Worthless little discs of copper clad zinc were keeping that thousand dollar piano from working at all! 

I hadn’t thought about the episode for awhile.  Then today, I received an email from my amplifier technician.  He informed me that he couldn’t make a repair on a particular guitar amplifier.  The customer would need to pick it up and either replace the unit or get a new power supply and integrated circuit board.  I asked what had caused such extensive damage to the amplifier.  His answer?  A penny had been dropped down through the top of the amplifier case and had fallen across the high voltage circuit, shorting it out, along with several other components.  A four hundred dollar amplifier – ruined because of one single penny!

As I think about the incongruity of the situation, I’m reminded that most of our lives are like that.  The tiny, insignificant events that occur almost daily seem to control and direct the majority of our actions and feelings.  Oh, I’m aware that many of us have huge events which also affect our existence, but somehow, we seem to understand the magnitude of these episodes and do our best to cope effectively with them.  The little things now…those, we don’t attach nearly as much importance to and consequently, we are derailed by the most minor of occurrences.

I remember how, as kids, we used to put pennies on the railroad tracks, the common belief being that if a train were stopped, it couldn’t roll again if the penny were right under its wheels.  Failing that, we would get a wonderful smashed penny anyway, so it was a win-win for us.  The myth has proved to be wrong, but we liked the idea of a great big locomotive being stymied by a tiny, thin penny.  It would seem that what has been shown to be untrue for those inanimate machines, is actually accurate for the living, breathing human beings.

I’ve seen marriages which have fallen apart, piece by piece; destroyed by tiny issues piled, one upon another, until the two parties involved could see no way to resolve the problems.  Just as with the pennies in the keyboard of that piano, they waited until the music stopped completely to look for answers and by then, it was too late.  Churches can (and have) split apart over the most idiotic things (carpet color springs to mind);  businesses fail most often because of a preponderance of small blunders and not any one large event.  You see, a sense of urgency drives us to deal with the large problems immediately.  The small issues seem to present no real danger and are left to fester and eat away at the foundations, eventually leading to complete disaster.

I’ve said before that you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.  I think maybe we should at least address it.  As it turns out, over time, pennies can actually cause more problems than dollars.

I may think twice before offering my “two cents’ worth” the next time.  How about you?  A penny for your thoughts?

“For want of a nail, the horse was lost;
for want of the horse, the rider was lost; 
for want of the rider the battle was lost; 
for want of the battle, the kingdom was lost.  
And, all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
(Anonymous)

“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.”
(Luke 16:10 NLT)

Come!  Listen to the pipe organ – the invitation was made.
Innocently, one would imagine, but in the words was laid
More meaning than could be expressed. 
Pain.  Annoyance.  Boredom.  Distress. 

I’ll go.  I’ll listen to the pipe organ.  I uttered the words. 
And reckoned that the sentence could be endured. 
It must be possible; Yes, it must be so. 
I’ve seen it done and…I can’t say no. 

At the back of the room!  That should be my locus. 
From there, on my snores, there can be no focus. 
But upon entering, I was without choice. 
Front row seats!  I had, clearly, no voice. 

We sat and waited.  Our arrival was premature. 
Perusing the program, one could only infer
That all hope indeed was gone. 
And the early mindset, completely spot on. 

Page after page mentioned organ and choir,
Enough for a week. I’d hoped for an hour. 
If those weren’t enough a grimace to bring,
In between each, the crowd had to sing. 

When dread was worst, the program commenced. 
My confusion did too.  A shift in spirit, I sensed. 
With every note, the heart seemed to take flight. 
Moments passed, darkest mood turned to light! 

Prelude and Fugue by Bach, led the charge. 
Up to the heights we stormed, but soon tears too large
To be hidden, coursed down from my eyes. 
I repent.  My words were all lies. 

No pain, but rapture.  Nothing there to annoy. 
No boredom was found.  No distress, but more joy
Was present than I ever had guessed. 
I don’t think I err when I say we were blessed.

In surprising places His joy can be found. 
It surely will be in the next place I’m bound. 
I borrow trouble. It ties me in knots
And keeps me from seeing the blessings I’ve got. 
 
Beauty lies around us.  It requires that we stop
And listen and feel.  And, sometimes shut up. 
The heart, when unfettered may actually soar
To heaven, or perhaps at least, to its shore. 

I’m back on the ground at last, for the night. 
If invited again, I think I just might
Stay home.  I’m not sure that I’m made
To soar to the heights, more than once a decade.

“…But now bring me a musician.” And when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him.
(2 Kings 3:15 ESV)

“Music hath charms to sooth the savage beast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”
(William Congreve~English playwright and poet~1670-1729)

The scrawny kid in the goofy cowboy boots was confused.  That in itself was not an unusual situation, but this was different.  He had gotten home without the horn coming along with him!  How was that possible?  He was sure he had carried it out to the portico where all the bus riders waited for the big yellow transport vehicles.  He definitely remembered picking it up at the band room and lugging the ugly gray case all the way through the halls.  He had a vivid picture in his mind of setting it down at the end of the concrete bench.  After that, the memory got a little fuzzy.  Maybe it was because he had spent the rest of his waiting time trying to impress Liz.  Today was record day in English class and he had brought his Three Dog Night LP (or maybe it was his brother’s…the memory fails on some points).  The pretty young thing was a little impressed with that and wanted to know what other albums he had at home.  Sadly, it turned out that The Carpenters and Neil Diamond didn’t help him at all with her. He was attempting to recover from that little set back when Bus #23 arrived.  Grabbing his books, the skinny boy ran to catch his ride.  It stopped quite a ways down the lane from where the failed conquest had taken place.  The race to the bus felt just like the retreat from defeat that it was.

That all seemed irrelevant now, since he was standing in his living room at home, forlorn and wondering where his horn was.  Well, technically it wasn’t his.  The band loaned horns such as this, due to the high cost of purchasing the expensive instruments, which would have cost something around fifteen hundred dollars when new.  The one whose location he was desperately casting about to recall wasn’t anything close to new, but that wouldn’t make any difference to Mr. Zook, his band director.  He had been assigned that horn and would be expected to have it in band class tomorrow!  The worried young man could just envision sitting on the bench outside the band room waiting….Hold on!  That was it!  He had left it sitting at the end of the concrete bench under the bus portico at school when he ran for the bus at the last minute! 

“Mom….”  A quick ride to the school was no help.  The horn wasn’t there.  Gone.  Someone had picked it up.  It was either stolen or in the possession of someone who would get it back to the band room.  Unfortunately, time would reveal that the former was the case.  The horn had disappeared…for good, it seemed.

Calls were made.  Reports were filed.  On-duty teachers were asked if they had observed anything.  Day after interminable day, for over a week, the lanky kid sat in band class without an instrument, feeling the glare of the band director.  Mr. Zook had a mean glare, too!  No one wanted to be in his bad graces.  This episode was the second time this school year the kid had seen that glare from his band director; the first time being when he had opted to attend an ROTC event rather than an important band marching practice.  The lost horn was strike two.  There might not be an opportunity for the third strike.

Finally one afternoon, after a week and a half of stewing, Mr. Zook called the boy into his office.  The teen was resigned to his fate.  He would be ejected from band and would spend the rest of his school days paying for the missing horn.  The woebegone kid stumbled into the office and stood there, unbelieving.  Right in front of him, under the desk, was his horn case!  Mr. Zook sat, fiddling with a pencil.  “I’m not sure that I can trust you with the horn again,” he began, sternly.  The boy almost didn’t hear his words, he was so ecstatic.  It took a moment for the import of the words to sink in.  Even though the horn was back, he might not be (back, that is).  This wasn’t possible!  He had assumed that his fate was tied to the horn.  If it was gone forever, so was he.  It was back where it belonged, so, surely he would be also…right?  He stuttered out an objection, but Mr. Zook went on.  “You haven’t lived up to my expectations so far.  How do I know you’ll do any better?”  At that moment, nothing seemed more important in the young man’s thoughts than the idea that he had to be in band!  He still had no real answer, but he blurted out, “I’ll try my best,” and then waited for the pronouncement of his doom.   The only reply came as Mr. Zook hooked the horn case with his foot and shoved it across the concrete floor to him.  “Oh, go home and practice!”  was all the gruff director said.  And, with that, the ordeal was over.

But, was it?  As with many memories which time cannot erase, this one keeps being replayed periodically.  You see, there is a bigger lesson, as there frequently is in these little disasters we encounter throughout our lives.  One begins to realize that, as with the missing horn, the tools we use to function throughout life are not ours, but are simply on loan.  You only have to look at those who once were gifted, but have lost those assets for one reason or another, to understand.  Cheerleaders are stricken with illness and confined to wheelchairs; brilliant intellectuals are reduced to babbling confusion when consumed by dementia; talented artists contract Parkinson’s disease and are unable to control their hands, much less their brushes; beauty deserts the aging beauty queen, with many discovering the futility of its subsequent pursuit.  Everything we have in this life is fleeting; here one day and gone the next, often to our dismay.  Carelessness frequently speeds its decay and loss.

The older we grow, the more precious become these giftings, and the less we take them for granted.  I recall with amusement the answer my late father-in-law often gave when asked how he was.  Instead of going into a depressing recital of all his aches and pains, he would often reply with a twinkle in his eye, “Well, I’m able to be up and around, and take nourishment.”  We need to appreciate what is in our hands and use that to the best of our abilities while we are able to wield it.  We guard it, yes.  We hone our skills, certainly.  But, we also understand that there are seasons in life for everything, and many talents are ours only for that season.

Don’t be distracted by the pretty things, as the skinny boy was; don’t take your eye off of the goal.  Keep that gift near at hand and learn to excel at your craft.  It has been loaned to you and will be required of you.  Eventually, we all have to settle our accounts.  Sooner or later, we’ll hear the Director say, “You haven’t lived up to my expectations.”  Or, he’ll say, “Well done!”  

I know which one I want to hear.  Now, it’s time to go home and practice!

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.”
(James 1:17 ASV)

“Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing, that we see too late the one that is open.”
(Alexander Graham Bell~American inventor~1847-1922)

“Kids, let me show you something.”  Dad was moving a stack of old boards and, just seconds before he spoke, had jumped back momentarily, then recovered.  He was now standing, holding up the board, gazing intently at the underside of the rotted wood.  We weren’t sure what to expect, but we crowded over en masse to inspect whatever it was that had frightened him.  Imagine our surprise when all that met our eyes was a black spider in a messy, almost funnel-shaped, web.  Dad wasn’t afraid of spiders.  He protected them.  There were webs outside the door of the house, right where you would run into them when you walked out in the darkness.  You know the feeling…I won’t use any names, but even recently, I’ve heard screams of “Get it off!  Get it off!” as the arms are flailing wildly and fingers are frantically scraping the sticky web from the contorted face.  Apparently the anticipation of an over-reaching and aggressive spider in the center of the web is enough to trigger this unseemly performance.  At times like these, panic outweighs logic for a second or two until the adrenalin rush subsides and cooler heads prevail.

Dad loved having those webs around.  More spiders meant less flies and mosquitoes, to say nothing of the pesky gnats that were always attracted by the fresh fruits and vegetables which we thrived on in those days.  The spiders were a protected species in the Phillips’ Wildlife Refuge, much like every other wild creature which was smart enough to stay away from the restricted areas.  Basically, that meant that the interior of the house was off limits for snakes and rats, or creepy crawlies of any other sort.  That’s not to say that we didn’t sneak in a garter snake or two in our day…

Still peering steadily at the spider in its web, Dad spoke.  “I want you to look carefully at this one.  This spider, you stay away from.  Always check before you stick your hand under anything that has been lying on the ground for awhile.  If you see one of these ladies, give her a wide berth.”  Ladies?  How could he tell the sex of a spider?  Why would he make such a designation?  As he went on, we began to understand his statement.  It seems that this was a black widow.  Anticipating the questions, he explained that the male of the species is much smaller and that as soon as he has taken care of his marital duties (yeah, I think he used those words…), the female kills him and usually eats him.  We were intrigued, but also a little disgusted by the thought.  Most of the species with which we were familiar had habits similar to humans – mating and then either mothering, or protecting and providing.  All the human families we knew had mothers and fathers who shared the responsibilities of, not only procreation, but rearing and nurturing their offspring.  We weren’t sure that we liked this murderous black spider, but we were glad that she was so clearly identified by the bright orange hourglass-shaped marking on her abdomen.  It would give us an easy way to identify her and avoid contact in the future.

Would that the males of the species were so forewarned to avoid contact with the deadly lady.  It springs to mind that the hapless male spider actually does mate for life!  It is a short life, but he sticks to his responsibility, right to the grisly end.  The male is a small and unimpressive fellow, brown instead of black and with none of the bright coloration his mate demonstrates.  He is roughly one half the size of his female counterpart.  The nature guidebooks inform us that the black widow herself often lives to the advanced age of five years old, potentially bearing four to nine egg sacs in each of those years.  We are also cryptically informed that “…a male’s lifespan is much shorter.”  Talk about a transitory relationship!

 I am slightly amused as I consider that another creature we are familiar with, the praying mantis, also has such a relationship.  The larger female of that species often consumes her diminutive mate, frequently without protest from the little fellow.  For some reason, we don’t tend to assign quite the stigma to the mantis that we do to the black widow, yet the end result is the same.  Granted, the mantis is not as dangerous to humans as is the spider in question, but the danger to the mate is identical.  He will not survive the relationship.

Applications to the human condition spring to mind and I don’t mean of the “Fatal Attraction” ilk.  Those realistic parallels are (thankfully) almost nonexistent, but I do see other similarities daily.  While the black widow is actually created to function exactly the way she does, no human being is.  Still, wives dismiss and disrespect their husbands, relegating them to nothing more than a footnote in the family hierarchy; husbands dominate their wives, demeaning or disparaging them in front of their own children.  Both situations effectively remove the damaged mate from participation in the process of nurturing and loving their offspring.  This is not a situation which depends on the sex of either the aggressor or the damaged party; it clearly works both ways.  I have also observed the, by now, common situation where one of the parents is completely missing from the picture, often by choice, sometimes because of incredible pressure from the other parent.  In humans, the effect is disastrous.  The black widow and mantis act as they do because of design and the result is the continuation of their species; the human family acts against the created order of things and the result is chaos, both physical and spiritual, especially for the children, but also for their parents, and extended family, and even for society at large.

I know that it was not in character for my brothers and me, but we were mighty careful to follow my Dad’s instructions regarding the venomous female spider.  She always had plenty of room when we were around.  We knew her bite couldn’t kill us, but we sure didn’t want to suffer the same wrath her hapless mates encountered.

Sometimes, a healthy respect for things that can injure and destroy is the next step along the path of wisdom.

It’s too bad that not all such dangers are so clearly marked…   

“See, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.  So, be as cunning as snakes and as innocent as doves.” 
(Matthew 10:16 ISV)

“For many men that stumble at the threshold are well foretold that danger lurks within.”
(William Shakespeare~English dramatist~1564-1616)