The Rat Trap

I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying when I responded to Pops’ comment about making a scrapbook. Margaret pointed out that not everyone is going to get on here and search through my whole blog just to find news on Savannah. She thought it was a great idea. I merely was thinking about the fact that I had saved the files so it was available somewhere, but she understood Pops’ idea that people will want/need more than that.

I will have to figure out how to do that, but Margaret is crafty.

I got to see her crawl Sunday. Up on them knees and zoom, under the pew. Fortunately dad has experience with this. She now has 2 teeth and pictures will be coming soon. I bought an inexpensive camera when I bought the laptop notebook. Of course I forgot to bring it with me. Sorry guys. I will update the gallery with Lizzy’s wedding pictures and Savannah pictures. I wonder if I should start a separate Savannah blog? As if I keep these blogs updated.

It was my turn this month to sit in the “Homespun” class that pastor’s wife teaches. She is by far and away the best teacher I have ever heard. She has a passion for it and it makes a difference. One of the things she talked about was taking care of each other. Carrying each other’s burdens, helping each other. There is a member of our church whose mother lost everything in the flooding and she is living here now and she has nothing. Nothing at all. What the church is doing is having every one (there are 500+ members) pitch in a dollar or two or whatever they can, a five or a ten even, per week to help support her until she can get on her feet. Since the number 500 includes children and the elderly, the actual number of contributors is going to be less than that. This was in lieu of taking up a one-time offering, then forgetting about it.

She, Pastor’s wife, had this little parable she found somewhere. I found the exact same one and it says “Author Unknown.” If you know anything else about this piece I would like to know. It’s called:

THE RATTRAP

A rat looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. What food might it contain? He was aghast to discover that it was a rattrap.

Retreating to the barnyard the rat proclaimed the warning, “There’s a rattrap in the house! There’s a rattrap in the house!” The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Rat, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The rat turned to the pig and told him, “There’s a rattrap in the house! There’s a rattrap in the house!” “I am so very sorry Mr. Rat,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured that you are in my prayers.”

The rat turned to the cow. She said, “Like wow, Mr. Rat. A rattrap. I am in grave danger. Duh?”

So the rat returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s rattrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a rattrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital.

She returned home with a fever. Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the barnyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well. She died, and so many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when there is a rat trap in the house, the whole barnyard’s at risk.

~Author unknown~

Remember, the Good Book says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

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