Squirrel

Everything I’m about to describe actually happened in the brief span of maybe three seconds. The consequences ended a life unnecessarily.

I was driving home just the other day on a residential street not far from the house when a squirrel ran out in front of my car. It couldn’t have been more than two or three car lengths in front of me. I was traveling, I’m sure, at the posted speed of 30. Everything was fine until, for some squirrelly reason, the tree rodent decided to change his course. Then, just as he cleared my path, he decided to go back where he came from. (I will assume it was a “he” squirrel and not a “she” squirrel only because someone would accuse me of chauvinism for assuming otherwise). Making a U-turn in less space than it takes to write that word, the squirrel reversed course on the razor’s edge of its claws and started back, it’s huge, furry tail whiplashing with every turn. My heart stopped.

I know people who brag about hitting squirrels, or other living things. I’m just not a hunter. I shot a rabbit once, about twenty years ago. I grieved for a week and took that as a clear sign that hunting was simply not in me. I can’t shoot anything that can look back at me with its own eyes. When the squirrel cleared my lane, I felt instant relief about being able to keep my private vow not to take a life.

Then, for yet another squirrelly reason, the varmint did the same thing all over. It made another U-turn and then another. In the one or two seconds it took my car to close the distance, the squirrel was basically standing in the same place making one U-turn after another, like a drunk square dancer who’d lost his partner on the dance floor. Another car was too close behind me to slam on the brakes. The next thing I heard was a thump. I looked up quickly enough to watch in my rearview mirror as the now flatter squirrel went for a long roll behind me. Why did the squirrel cross the road? That’s one question for philosophical pondering. The more important question might be, why didn’t the squirrel just go ahead and cross the road?

I didn’t mean to kill the squirrel. He’d be leaping through the branches on this beautiful Fall afternoon or squirreling away nuts for the winter if he’d just made up his mind and stayed the course, one way or the other. An ancient scripture records something about “choosing this day whom we will serve.” Make a choice and stay the course. Stop making U-turns. Unless you can actually see a reason why moving in a certain direction is otherwise destructive, more likely than not, you’ll put more at risk by turning back than by moving forward.

There is a time for repentance, for changing the course of our life’s direction because of a higher call from a holy voice. Time and again, however, it’s not the sins we leave behind that finally catch up with us. It’s the sins to which we return over and over. As long as we are seeking Truth and honestly searching for God, there is very little out in front of us that is as threatening as the stuff behind us.

In my experience, even God can only do so much for someone who keeps looking back over his shoulder and going back because they really believe the good days are the old ones behind, not the new ones ahead. The apostle Peter was less tactful, describing such navigational folly as the equivalent of “a dog (that) returns to its vomit” or a “sow that is washed (and then returns) to wallowing in the mud” (2 Peter 2:22). What it is that is so appealing about vomit or mud that it would lure us back rather than urge us forward is truly one of the greatest mysteries of my own life, and human experience in general as I observe it.

The poor squirrel couldn’t make up his mind and the rest is road kill history. Life is in front of us, not behind us. The sooner we make the choice of which way to go and stay the course, the sooner we’ll make progress toward our true calling and avoid living a very miserable life, no matter how long it lasts.