As spring begins to take hold of Middle Georgia, the grounds of Highland Hills are beginning to burst forth in color and the various sounds of critters reveling in the vitality of the warming sun. My favorite to watch out of my office window are the squirrels. They scuttle and tumble and scamper and spin across the lawn and around the azalea bushes. Sometimes they roll across one another in their hurry to get nowhere in particular. They seem to embody spring frivolity with frenetic and erratic energy. I could see how such darting and wild movements may be beneficial for a small creature that larger predators might find tasty. It is impossible to predict where they are going to go, perhaps in part because the squirrel does not, in fact, know itself where it is trying to go. But while this adaptive behavior serves to save them from being hunted for lunch, in our modern world the indecisive squirrel is often the one running back and forth across the road before being flattened by my car tires.
There is at least one squirrel who bucks this erratic and distracted behavior, the prehistoric Scrat from the Ice Age movies. Scrat lives in the time of the wooly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger and he has discovered what is seemingly the only acorn on the planet in his frigid world. With dogged determination Scrat bucks his species' proclivities for indecision and remains focused on the prize this acorn represents. Through lava and glacial movements, extreme heights and predators, Scrat keeps his eyes on the prize and falls into trouble again and again by ignoring the world around him.
Sometimes it is easy to be a squirrel. I often feel like I bounce back and forth in life struggling to decide what event, or task, or person, or deadline, or errand, or news needs my attention most. Too often I am barely able to focus on any one thing, let alone to focus fully on the things that matter most. And some day sit is easy to be like Scrat, to put my head down and only focus on one or two things to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes it is hard to engage with our world or to look up from the all-consuming elements of our lives. Truthfully, in some seasons, it is necessary to stay laser focused in order to survive. Usually, though, when my head is down and I only focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else, I miss the work of God in our wider world and the concerns of people I am called to love. It is easy to be a squirrel, but that is a great way to end up as roadkill. Perhaps this Lent you need to examine where your attention is being placed. Perhaps you need to prune some places that are causing distraction. Perhaps you need to find ways to look up and engage the people around you, to seek how God is at work around you. But whatever you do, don't be a squirrel. They don't live very long.