MY NEIGHBOR walked in my yard last night;
I found his footprints this morning. It is not the first
time he has walked there, but we seldom meet. He works at
night and sleeps by day. Our paths cross like this in the
dewy dawn after he has gone to bed.
But how can our paths cross when he isn't
there? Ah, my neighbor leaves his telltale path behind him.
I know exactly where he walked. Here he climbed the sheer
walls of the risers of the steps and meandered on the
treads. Here is a straightaway of about fifteen feet along
the cement walk. I am astounded at the prodigious amount of
work involved in these shining trails, comparable to my
walking from Nashville to Memphis in one night-building my
road as I go and carrying my house on my back.
If I had been here in the cool stillness
of the after-sunset glow, or in the moonlight, and I had
looked where I stepped, and had been willing to bend and
pause, I would have been able to "... watch the tube-eyed
snail Creep o’er his long moon-glittering trail."
Marvelous evidences of the Creator's
wisdom are in the structure and life habits of the "creeping
things.". Nightly the snail, with placid perseverance, goes
about his task of cleaning up my dooryard. Mold, decaying
vegetation are his to remove. Incomprehensible is the amount
of scavenger work done by the lowly snail population of
grass-roots jungles and vegetable plots. Let him have his
few bites of fresh-lettuce-leaf dessert. A laborious life he
leads, contributing to the well-being of lordly man, who
would crush him under a brutal, stupid foot if he saw him.
The snail, as the Bible says, "goeth upon
the belly." (Leviticus 11:42.) The learned have called him a
gastropod—a "stomach-footed" creature. He literally does
what the small boy with his sled calls "belly bumping." On
his stomach on the ground he creeps by amazing muscles
arranged by the Creator in his soft stomach side. It is a
"belly bumping" road to which he applies these muscles, for
his flesh is so soft it seems almost liquid. That gives him
his general surname of "mollusk"—soft.
How can anything so soft and weak pull
itself over rough cement, dry ground, and scratchy gravel
without being cut to pieces? It is because he builds his own
road. From his pores he exudes a viscid substance that lays
a smooth roadbed over every rough surface. He carries a
friction-reducing pathway with him. His life is part of the
great pattern of love that God has woven throughout His
creation.
Dear heavenly Father, as I go out today
to meet the unknown, let me be as placid and trustful as the
snail. Over the frictions of daily life may Thy Holy Spirit
in my heart shed forth a soothing sweetness that will make
the rough places plain. May I move right forward, no matter
what the obstacles. And may I leave a shining path of
influence that will lead others' thoughts to Thee, as this
lowly snail's track has led my morning meditation to my
Creator. Amen.
