Chapter 11
Reach Up
It was a windy night at The Nest, as Sergeant Sparrow had “code-named” their campsite, and few things are more frightening for a sheltered city child than windy woods in rural darkness. Katie had seldom cried in her young life, but tonight, lying on the ground with the forest closing in around her, she whimpered softly. Up in their hammocks Daddy and the boys swayed, asleep, unaware. How could they be so comfortable in those terrible things? Soon she could take it no longer.
The Sergeant came awake to little hands pulling on the edge of his hammock. He sleepily looked out at a teary-eyed Katie, who regarded him with anxious sobriety. “I lied,” she confessed. “I am scared.”
Silently, the Sergeant slid down off his hammock. “It’s okay to be scared,” he assured her with an arm around her shoulders. “I’m scared sometimes myself.”
“Really? What do you do when you’re scared?”
“I talk to Jesus,” he told her.
“That won’t work for me,” she mourned.
“Why not?”
“’Cause Jesus only listens to Christians,” she sighed.
“Would you like to be a Christian?”
“I don’t think I understand it well enough.”
“Tell me what you do understand.”
“Okay....” She thought for a moment. “Jesus died on a cross,” she began carefully, “so we could go to heaven. People who are going to heaven are Christians. But I really don’t know why they needed Jesus to die. Couldn’t he just take them there?”
“Only if they never did anything bad, their whole life long.”
“Oh.”
“You do know that you’ve done bad things, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“God can’t just forget about those, even if He wanted to. It wouldn’t be right. But Jesus can cover your sins with his Blood. Then you’ll look perfect to God, even with all the sins you’ve done, and He’ll let you into heaven. And, Jesus will be with you right now, and He’ll help you not be scared.”
She sighed again and bit her lip, thinking hard.
“Katie, Katie,” he said fondly. “You want to figure everything out in that little brain of yours, even though you’re just nine. But you don’t have to. Think of it like this: A few minutes ago, you were lying on your own bed that you’d made on the ground, and you were scared and miserable.”
She nodded emphatically.
“That’s where we all are, lying on our own bed that we made of sins and fears. But Jesus is there, up above all that, and if we’ll reach up, like you did with me, He’ll come down and pick us up, and we’ll be safe. We don’t have to understand everything. We just have to be sorry for our sins, and love Him, and want to follow Him. Can you reach up to Jesus?”
Katie thought for a long time. Then, undirected, she closed her eyes and stretched a hand out toward the starry sky. “Please Jesus,” she said, “I’m sorry for the bad things I’ve done. Please pick me up and help me not be scared and let me into heaven. I want to follow You.”
Mr. Sparrow hugged her firmly. “You’re the newest little sister in God’s family now,” he told her. “Let me be the first to welcome you.”
She hugged him back and laughed in delighted wonder. “Jesus did pick me up, didn’t He?”
“Yes, He did.”
They talked in quiet excitement for a long time, until finally Katie said with resolution, “I think I’d like to try the hammock again now.”
“You can have mine,” the Sergeant smiled, “and I’ll put yours up for me.”
Katie woke the next morning wondering how she could ever have thought this safe, comfortable hammock was a scary, swaying monstrosity. Seeing that the sun was high, she tumbled eagerly from her bed and ran to the campfire pit, where creek-water oatmeal was boiling under the Sergeant’s watchful eye. Nothing had ever looked and smelled so good. She hung close to him all morning.
Shortly after ten o’clock, the Sergeant singled out Chris and Ben. “Guys,” he asked, “are you up for a challenge?” The way he said it made their eyes shine with excitement, and they nodded eagerly.
“I’m going to send you on a ‘mission,’” he told them. “When I looked this place over last month, I hid two items in an ammunition box, somewhere in this area. That ammunition box is your objective. This pouch contains a set of directions which, if followed properly, will ultimately lead you there. Along the way, you’ll need to pick up the items on this list – ordinary things like certain plants and rocks – which you will present to me in order to complete the mission successfully.
“Over the past few weeks, you two have both been studying botany and orienteering. You’ll need your botanic knowledge to locate and identify the items on the list, and your orienteering skills to follow the directions. Now, this isn’t standard orienteering. There’s no topo map, and you’ll find your control points using more than just a compass. You’ll also be using logic and observational skills. One stage will require a type of starlight navigation, so you will be gone overnight.”
He handed Chris a yellow GPS unit wrapped in packaging tape. “This is in case you get lost. Once you break the seal, however, the mission is aborted and you must return to camp. Any questions?
“Okay then, I suggest you get your gear together and take off. You have to complete the mission by tomorrow morning, and you’re going to need all the time between now and then.”
Real soldiers were never more pumped about a real assignment than were Ben and Chris about their unexpected quest. They recklessly tore down and rolled up their hammocks, threw together a bag of food, laced on their hiking boots, and scrambled off into the woods with backpacks dangling. Keeping one eye on the compass, they were carefully following the fifteen-degree course delineated in the first step of their instructions.
The Sergeant smiled as they vanished into the trees.
“Are you going to follow them?” asked a wide-eyed Moe. “What if they fall in a hole, or get eaten by bears, or wander around in circles till they die?”
“I’ll tell you two a little secret,” the Sergeant replied with a mischievous grin. “That GPS unit also has a transponder. So while Chris and Ben can’t use it without breaking the seal and blowing the mission, I can use it to find them at any moment. Do you think your mom would have agreed to this caper otherwise?”
“Probably not,” Moe admitted, chuckling with pleasure at being in on the secret. “So what do we do now?”
“There’s a nice quiet swimming hole two hundred yards down the creek,” said the Sergeant. “You did bring your swimsuits, didn’t you?”
“We did,” Moe replied, “but Katie gets really scared in deep water.”
“We can just stay in the shallows if you want.”
“That’s okay,” said Katie resolutely. “I want to learn to swim in the deep water now. Jesus will help me be more courageous.”
“You know something?” the Sergeant bent down and whispered in her ear, “That word is bigger than you are, but you’re right – He will help you be more courageous.”
The Sparrow Found A House (Sparrow Stories #1) Page 11
