Untroubled

In John 14:1-14, Jesus talked to his friends about what it was going to be like when he wasn't there anymore. Jesus knew that his friends would have some tough times and he wanted to comfort them. He said he was going to prepare a place and he would come back to be with them. I was thinking about what that means for you and me, and Barty told me this story that helped me understand.

One day, as the legend goes, Esquilo the Squirrel was… not really having a good time. For his whole adventuring life he had been traveling with Barty Badger, but now Barty said he was going away for a little while. He didn’t know how he would handle all the adventures in Old Raven’s Forest. What if he met a wildebeest! He was nervous, anxious, upset. Scared, even. He was troubled.

Barty knew that Esquilo might feel that way, so he asked his very good friend Miss Felicity Fox to come and Adventure with the squirrel for a bit. Esquilo sat down on the path and chittered to himself until Felicity showed up. She was tall and calm and had a backpack with a thousand pockets all in different colors. "Come on," she said, adjusting her scarf. "I know a place we can go."

Esquilo wasn’t sure. "Are you sure you know how to Adventure?" he asked.

Felicity smiled. "Don't worry, little squirrel. I have what we need."

The two trundled off into the morning. Well, Esquilo squirreled off. He anxiously looked in every shadow, at every tree, around every rock. He was so distracted that he didn't see the puddle of pine sap in the middle of the path and he stepped right in it! The sticky, goopy sap grabbed onto his paw and he couldn't move. "I don't know how to get out of pine sap!" he cried. Felicity calmly reached into a pocket in her pack and pulled out… an ice cube. Esquilo stared at it. "How…?" Felicity didn't answer; she just bent down and used the ice cube to freeze the sap and pull Esquilo's foot right out.

As the day wore on, Esquilo started to feel a little better. Felicity did seem to know what she was doing. That is, until they came upon a flock of geese in the path. They wouldn't move! Esquilo pulled on his ears and cried, "I don't know how to talk to geese!" Felicity thought for a moment, reached into another pocket, and pulled out… a handkerchief. "All geese have terrible allergies," Felicity explained. She passed the handkerchief around and each goose blew their nose and waddled off the path. Esquilo's eyes went wide.

Just as the sun was setting, the two animals rounded a bend in the path and found a wildebeest and a unicycle. He was blocking the whole path, sobbing loudly. "Oh no!" said Felicity. "You fell off your unicycle, didn’t you?” Esquilo had no idea how handle this situation, but stood calmly and looked at Felicity. She would know. Sure enough, she took off her backpack, muttering to herself "where did I put that… ah ha!" and pulled out… a huge cone of cotton candy. "Wildebeests love cotton candy," she said. The wildebeest gleefully munched down the cotton candy, hopped back up on his unicycle and rode off into the sunset. Esquilo just shook his head, no longer amazed that this fox had even cotton candy in her bag, because of course she did.

He found that he wasn't anxious or nervous or troubled anymore. Felicity would know what to do.

Soon, as evening really set in, they came up over a hill and found something else unexpected: Barty Badger. He had a fire going with some delicious-smelling roasted acorns. And up in a tree there were seven different hammocks all perfectly squirrel-sized. Barty smiled as they came up to him. "You've had quite the adventure, my friend!" Barty said. "Time for you take a rest." After snacking on some of the best roasted acorns he’d ever eaten, Esquilo ran up the tree to pick the perfect hammock.

Well, that's what the legend says, but I know one thing is true: It's good to have someone who knows what they're doing on an adventure.