RIDIN' FOR THE BRAND


I was not having a very good time.  It was hot, three digits hot with the humidity through the roof and I was
standing in a hole in the ground with a shovel in my hand. Welcome to Texas!  “I’m supposed to be
smarter than this,” I thought. “With all this grey hair you’d think I would have learned something along the
way.” I was digging a hole that was slated to be a new fish pond in the back yard when I spotted a penny
in the dirt. “My lucky day,” I thought.  “I wonder how deep this was because from the looks of it, it has been
in the ground for quite a while.” I picked it up, wiped some of the dirt from it and dropped it in my pocket.  
As I returned to my digging I was overcome with a peculiar sadness. I had just received a blessing in a
visible and tangible way and the best I could do was to attribute it to “luck.”

God made a truly amazing creature when he created man.  We claim we’re not superstitious, yet, we read
our horoscopes in the newspaper, refuse to walk under a ladder or step on a crack in the sidewalk. We
even lift our feet when we drive our cars under a train trestle. Why, any of these would bring “bad” luck!
This is truly strange behavior for someone created in God’s own image and is the benefactor of His
grace. Yet, we do these things, and even more, almost daily without giving them another thought.

I have a good day at Ag’rita.  “I was lucky,” I say. I have a bad day at Gunsmoke. “It wasn’t my lucky day.” I
have been shooting a pistol in competition for over forty years and in the process have experienced good
days and bad. I know that focus determines the quality of the outcome, not luck. Our days are filled with
contradictions.

I try to reduce complicated principles to their lowest common denominator.  Faith is one of those
principles. Have you ever attempted to describe to someone who is not churched and doesn’t have a clue
what faith is, how they are to live by faith? I see faith as believing that God will do what God said He would
do when He said He would do it. Simply put, faith is nothing more than believing God. God told us that
wherever we go or whatever we do that He is already there. He told us that He cares for His children; that’
s us. God told us that He is active in our daily lives even to the degree that He knows every flower we see
and every feather of every sparrow that flies over our head. God actively participates in our lives. We know
this as God’s providence. Do we believe Him? Do we have faith? Are we actively attempting to live by
faith? Sometimes!

The struggles we experience in our daily lives and the lessons we receive as we attempt to live to the
glory of God comes to us as a mosaic rather than a single narrative. It is confusing at its best. We need to
remember that subtlety is the first tool of the devil. If the enemy can manage to have us think of the
occurrences in our lives as good or bad luck, the enemy wins. Our focus is taken from God and is now on
ourselves.  That is idolatry and idolatry is a sin. Somewhere along the way we must remember that it is all
about God, not about us.

I recently took on the task of teaching my wife, Prissy, (Norma’s SASS alias) to shoot a rifle in cowboy
competition. As she familiarized herself with the weapon and became comfortable with the noise and the
movement when the weapon is fired, she fell into a common malady of all cowboy shooters – listening for
the ding. All cowboy is shot with cast lead bullets fired at steel targets. There is a definite ring when lead
strikes steel. Everyone who shoots a gun wants to hit what they are shooting at, that’s why you shoot at it.
The problem in cowboy is that everything is done by time. Winning is determined by who was the most
accurate the quickest. It is a constant struggle to learn to shoot accurately and do it quickly. These two
descriptors almost do not belong in the same sentence.

Like most of us, Prissy would take aim with her rifle, squeeze the trigger, and when the gun fired she
would freeze. It didn’t appear she was even breathing until she heard the sound of the lead striking steel.
When she heard that sound, she would quickly work the lever and take aim at the next target. In the
process, precious moments of time were wasted, lost while listening for the ding.

There is no contradiction in God. He not only speaks the truth, He is truth. When He says He is involved in
our lives, He is involved all the time. There is never a moment when He dozes off or looks the other way.
The oxymoron is man’s invention, not God’s. We are the ones who put contradictory statements in the
same sentence and expect someone else to understand what we are saying. Life is full of contradictions,
like calling a water heater a hot water heater. You don’t heat hot water, it is already hot. God’s active part
in our lives is not capricious. It is purposeful, it is deliberate, and it should solicit our praise.

As I stood there in the hole I was digging, leaning on the shovel thinking about the penny I “found” I
realized I was listening for the ding. It is never a good thing to waste a praise. I felt a rain drop hit me on
the cheek. What is this, a teardrop? Not quite, for when I looked up I saw the rainbow and remembered
God’s promise. God is always faithful to His promise. I returned to my fish pond.

© Carl H. Lenz, 2007
A PENNY IN THE DIRT