Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath, June 8, 2024
Friday morning of this week I was hustling along on my usual post-breakfast walk, when I caught sight of this squirrel out of the corner of my eye. He was running along the horizontal bar which braced a woven-wire fence.
But when I got a better look at him, I discovered that his mouth was full of what looked like brown tree-needles. Thankfully, he paused at the fence-corner, giving me a chance for a hasty distant smartphone shot, before he turned the corner and scurried along the fence away from me.
I was intensely puzzled. Shelley and I see several squirrels in our neighborhood, often running briskly along backyard fences. It always amazes me how they can balance casually as they skitter along on the half-inch-wide edges of fence boards. But all I’ve ever seen in their mouths is nothing, or sometimes a nut which has been provided by the generous fence-owner.
So this bushily-bearded squirrel was a surprise. Aside from his acrobatic ability to run along the top of a round slippery iron rail with a mouthful, I asked myself, Do squirrels build nests?
It turns out that they do. Google Images provided me with photos of actual squirrel-nests, in trees! They don’t look as gracefully-shaped as birds-nests, but they must be serviceable, otherwise the squirrels wouldn’t build them.
Know where I’m going with this? Of course you do. Several times a week I hear breathtaking and often frightening stories about AI (artificial intelligence) and its eerie potentials. And all this time, squirrels have been quietly and systematically building their nests, showing how massively more advanced they are than even the most recent computers.
All of which leads us back, of course, to the following grand truth:
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. Psalm 33:6 NKJV
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them . . . .Exodus 20:11
. . . and then to this logical conclusion, crisply stated in the Book of Revelation:
. . .“Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.” Revelation 14:7
. . . and the squirrels and their mouthfuls and everything else.