When our family goes to the local grocery store, my 10 year old son and I often find ourselves in the seafood section admiring the crabs, lobsters, clams and various other sea creatures that are waiting to become someone’s dinner.
They sit in their watery cages well fed and well oxygenated. It always reminds me of an experience I had several years ago when I was at a school camp with one of my daughters. I was feeling rather low and was self absorbed with what I perceived to be great emotional burdens. While walking along the beach with a group of children, one of the young girls in the class came racing by in bare feet. Be aware that most of the beaches in British Columbia are not blanketed with soft warm sand. Most of them look like this:
They are rocky, and under every rock is an a treasure trove of creepy crawly critters. When the tide is out, there are thousands of tidal pools filled with crabs and other small creatures that most people are terrified to touch; but not this little girl. She ran through the pools without a care in the world. After one mad dash, I looked down, as forlorn as I was, and noticed a little crab with a broken leg.
I had an epiphany in that moment.
Despite all my trials and tribulations, I was not that crab. That crab was destined to live out its short life in a cold wet pool alone and ignored. It had no parents to visit, no children to hug, no retirement plan and no Wi-Fi. I recognize that the crab does not have the absorbent mind I enjoy filled with self awareness and the capacity to think, but it is this very gift of sentience that brought the very troubles that beset me that day at the beach. I could be the crab, but consider what I would have to give up. My troubles were entirely emotional. I had good health, food, clothing and housing. I had a loving family, and friends, and plenty of leisure time and doctors to heal me. I was enjoying, as the savior describes it, an abundant life (John 10:10).
I was having a chat just the other day with two fellows at our church building while I was waiting to pick up my daughter from a youth activity. Our conversation morphed and changed as casual conversations tend to do. At one point, we were discussing why, in a society of such abundance, were we spending the church’s tithing money on food for a youth activity – it was a rhetorical comment, but the point was that we have such an abundance in North America that is taken for granted.
One made the comment that, if we died and had a chance to discuss our mortal experience with others in heaven, most would say how they died from starvation at the age of 3, or they were killed in a war at age 12. I would report that I had dietary limitations so I could not eat too much sugar and that, due to my sedentary job, I had to jog each day to keep my weight and blood pressure down. I would, in short, be thoroughly ashamed of myself for having squandered my abundance on Netflix and hamburgers when so many others live in abject poverty or perhaps do not even have an opportunity to live at all.
Perspective, however, is not always very accessible. When we are suffering through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it is rather difficult to step back and consider the proverbial crabs. So this brings me to my title – crabs and the abundant life. Why, when faced with such miserable circumstances, do crabs flourish? For one, they do not know any other life. Our problem is that we are reminded daily through social media of how wonderful other people’s lives seem to be. The reality is, their wonderful life is by and large a lie. You see their beautiful home and their trip to the Bahamas, but behind the smiling faces on the photos is a soul as devastated as yours.
I must confess, and this is an easy and obvious confession to make, I would rather have a life of sorrow here in 21st century North America than to live in any other circumstances in any other era. I would not trade any of my setbacks if I have to live even 100 years ago.
Another point about crabs – no matter what comes their way, they just keep moving forward. Broken legs be damned. I have learned that no matter what happens, all I can do is figure out what is the next best decision and to move forward. There is no point in looking back save it be to correct, forgive or seek forgiveness; otherwise all we can do is what the crabs do. When you pull over a rock, the crabs do not lament the fact that their comfortable and safe house has been disrupted, rather they set about to find a new safe place to hide. There is no debate about the injustices of the dislodged rock, no clamoring for an explanation of why the rock was removed. They simply are wired to figure out the next best decision and they act.
So that is my lesson from crabs and the abundant life. Your life can always be worse, and believe it or not there are not that many (if any) who’s life is any better than your own. And finally, no matter where you are, decide on what the next right decision is and make it. No matter what you have done or where you are, a wonderful journey is always ahead of you and the future is getting brighter and brighter until the perfect day. Just try not to step on the crabs along the way.