I Tawt I Taw Tomething Worse Than a Puddy Tat
Did I ever tell you about the time my brother and I saw a pterodactyl? I was in my early to mid-teens, and my brother was a few years younger. We were visiting our favorite getaway spot, a beautiful river located deep in the woods behind our childhood home. Back in the day (not that it was THAT long ago), our neighborhood was safe and quiet, and my siblings and I often wandered into the woods to be gone for hours. It was no big deal. Our parents were thrilled we were outside, enjoying nature instead of sitting in front of the television or playing video games.
Anyway, it had been a typical day at “the Big Rock” (our name for the lovely location). We played in the water, explored the surrounding woods, and drew in the sand. Kid's stuff. Suddenly, a humongous, dark shape blocked out the light of the sun. We both looked up in amazement as a pterodactyl swooped overhead and flew off in the direction opposite our home. At first, we both thought we had imagined it, but we soon realized we couldn’t have both imagined the same thing at the same time. We were so excited we couldn’t wait to get home and tell everyone dinosaurs were not extinct after all because we had both seen one.
As you can imagine, our news was not received with as much enthusiasm as we had hoped. “It was just a bird,” our dad said.
“No,” I cried, “It was too big, and it didn’t look like any bird I’ve ever seen or heard of. I’m telling you, it was a pterodactyl.”
“Honey,” my mom said compassionately, “we believe you thought you saw a dinosaur, but it can’t be. They’re long gone. It must have been something else.”
Despite how hard my brother and I tried to convince them and how firmly we believed in what we saw, nobody else would believe us. So, we did the most natural thing a couple of kids would think to do—we set out to prove it. Day after day we went down to the Big Rock with a camera, determined to take a picture of the supposedly extinct creature and show everyone we were telling the truth. But alas, we never saw it again. . .until many years later.
Fast forward twenty or so years. I was minding my own business, walking down the local trail while enjoying my prayer time with God. The trail meanders through wooded sections and often follows a river, much like the one I frequently visited in my childhood days. On this particular morning, I glanced down at the water and saw the most amazing and unique creature. It was a lanky bird unlike any I had seen in our area. Evidently, the bird didn’t appreciate that I was staring at him because, at my approach, he took off in flight. My jaw dropped! Above my head flew my pterodactyl. It looked just like it, and even though I knew it was a bird, I could certainly understand how my teenage brain had been convinced of what I had seen that day so many years before. Finally, the mystery was solved. The pterodactyl was, in reality, a heron which looks nothing like a dinosaur while standing upright near a river but could definitely pass for one when in flight.
What did I learn from the experience? Well, first off, I learned that herons are popular in this area, and I have seen several of them since that day on the trail. Who knew? Second, I learned that I can’t always trust what I see because sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Yes, sometimes in life I’m sure about things, or at least I think I’m sure, but I later discover—just like the pterodactyl incident—it’s a case of mistaken identity. What do I mean? Here are a few examples:
When I’m facing a difficult situation, and I pray to God for help, but that help doesn’t seem to come, I see a God who doesn’t care. What’s really there, however, is a God who loves me too much to give me less than what’s best for me and also cares for me enough to not rush the situation along before I’ve gained the growth I needed to acquire.
When I read the newspaper, I see a world that is completely falling apart while God stands by idly and allows His children to be persecuted. What is really happening, though, is everything is falling into place, and God is working behind the scenes in ways I can’t even imagine.
I see a God who’s late, but the truth is, God is always on time.
I see a life too broken to be of any use, but God knows it requires brokenness to make the vessel usable.
I see efforts that are not paying off, but what’s really happening is lives are being touched across the world because of an encouraging message of hope written in a book or an online devotion or spoken in a Bible study.
That day at the Big Rock, I knew it couldn’t be a pterodactyl, but because I had no other explanation for what I had seen, I trusted what I saw (or thought I saw) instead of what was truly there. And that, my friends, is the opposite of faith.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ”
When it comes to God, the Bible, and life in general, we need to have faith and trust in what we know, not what we see. Yes, things may seem out of control, but the Scriptures assure us that God has everything in hand. He has given us many promises to secure our foundation and help us to stand firm. We need only believe above and beyond what we see. When we don’t, we might as well be shouting to the world, “I tawt I taw a pterodactyl!”