I thought I would try something different today. If anyone is good at drawing, it definitely needs some more illustrations:

A real turtle that I saw the day after I originally published this post!

Once upon a time, there was a Turtle. He was born on a foggy, rainy day. When he poked his head out of the shell that had been his home for so many weeks, he felt a cool mist breeze over his little turtle body. He looked around at his brothers and sisters who were still in their eggs, and he decided to go exploring – after all, he was hungry!

What he didn’t know was that his mother had built the nest just a few feet away from a steep slope high above a stream. He could not see where he was going in the fog, and soon he was tumbling head over heels down a muddy bank, slipping and sliding on his back like a bobsled!

Then, the world went silent. He felt very cold and wet, and he couldn’t breathe. When he finally found air, he saw that he was in the stream, drifting farther and farther away from his nest. Scared and shivering, he started paddling his little turtle flippers as hard as he could, until he reached the shore and dragged himself up on the land.

As he was drying himself on the muddy grass, a sharp voice caused him to dart inside his shell. “Well, you’re a funny creature, aren’t you?” said the voice. When he didn’t respond, the voice tried again, “Don’t worry, I don’t bite – unless you’re a fish.” Then, with suspicion in its voice, “You’re not a fish…are you?”

The Turtle shyly poked his head out to see a tall, white bird with its head cocked to the side, studying him. “No,” replied the Turtle with a shaky voice, “I’m a Turtle.”

“Oh, well then, we won’t have any problems! My name is Cranky Crane. Don’t worry, I’m not really cranky, it’s just a nickname the fish have for me. What were you doing in the water?”

The Turtle looked at Cranky Crane with relief and explained, “I just came out of my shell, and I was so hungry, but when I went looking for food, I fell in the stream and washed up here!”

Cranky Crane looked at the Turtle with a confused look on its face, “Well, if you’re so hungry, why didn’t you just eat the fish while you were taking your swim? It’s like an all-you-can eat buffet in there! …Not a fish guy? Well there’s crawdads and crabs, too – oh, and frogs…but they are just gross.

The Turtle thought that eating fish or crawdads or crabs or frogs didn’t sound very appetizing, but he was hungry, so he said, “Well, I’ve never eaten any of that…I guess it’s worth a try.” With that, he poked his head out over the water and waited for a fish to come by. When one finally swam over near him, he slowly brought his turtle neck down into the water…inch by inch coming closer and closer to the fish…ever so patiently – when he realized that the fish was long gone!

He tried and tried to catch a fish, but he just wasn’t as fast as Cranky Crane. He was about to try one last time, when he heard a chipper little voice above him squeak out, “There’s no need for that, silly! You’re not supposed to eat fish – you’re supposed to eat nuts!”

The Turtle looked up just in time to see the giant bushy tail of a squirrel dart out of sight down the branch of a tree, reappearing on the ground in front of him as fast as it had left.

“Hi, my name is Sassy Squirrel. Here, I’ll show you how to eat nuts. It’s easy!” With that, the squirrel picked a walnut off the ground, held it up to her mouth with miniature, nimble hands, and quickly snapped her large teeth down into its hard shell.

The Turtle thought this looked like a better idea than catching fish. After all, since he was born on land, maybe he was supposed to eat what the animals on the land eat. When Sassy Squirrel gave him a smaller nut – a buckeye – he approached it with renewed determination. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and began trying to bite through the nut. He tried as hard as he could, but his soft, toothless mouth just wasn’t strong enough to crack it. Sassy Squirrel shrugged, then skirted off up another tree.

Now the Turtle was really depressed. He wasn’t fast enough to catch fish like Cranky Crane; he wasn’t strong enough to crack nuts like Sassy Squirrel. It felt like everyone else in the world knew what they were supposed to be doing, and they were good at it! What was he good at? Nothing, he thought.

As he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself, an enormous dog with golden, shaggy hair and a bright red collar around its neck came bounding up to the stream. It stopped when it saw the Turtle, and with a gleeful smile, said, “Well howdy there, little fella’! My name is Max. You sure do look down! What’s wrong with you?”

The Turtle looked at Max, and with tears in his eyes he told him everything that had happened that day. “I just came out of my egg this morning, and it was raining, and then I fell down a hill, and I got washed away in a stream, and I’m so hungry, and Cranky Crane told me to eat fish, but I wasn’t fast enough to catch one, and Sassy Squirrel told me to eat nuts, but I wasn’t strong enough to break them, and now I’m just so hungry and lost and unhappy, and I don’t know what to do!”

The dog just shook his head and replied, “Oh, come on now, little guy! You got yourself all worked up over nothin’. Don’t you know that your master takes care of everything you need for you? Just look at me – I run around all day doing whatever I want, and then when my master calls, I come back and she feeds me everything I need!”

Before the Turtle could respond, they both cocked their heads at a loud whistle that came from over the hill. “In fact, that’s my master calling now. I better go!” And with that, Max cantered away, his tongue joyfully dangling out of his mouth.

The Turtle felt worse than ever. What ‘master’ was Max talking about? And Max never told him what he was supposed to eat! He concluded that Max must be a little bit loopy, and that he was probably going to starve if he sat around all day waiting on some ‘master’ to feed him. You have to take control of your life, thought the Turtle; you can’t leave it up to chance.

So, the Turtle moped away from the stream, depressed at how bad he was at everything, angry at Max for being so dumb, jealous of Cranky and Sassy for being so good at getting food, and when it came down to it – just plain hungry.

He was about to give up altogether when he saw something moving in the dirt. It was a long, dirt-flaked worm slowly making it’s way across the earth. As he crept closer to it, he felt his appetite grow again. He walked right up to the worm, and it didn’t dart away like the fish – it just kept moving along at its slow pace.

Feeling more hopeful, the Turtle reached down and lifted the worm up in its mouth. He didn’t have to open his mouth wide, and he didn’t need sharp teeth to eat it. With a shrug, the turtle swallowed up the worm. It tasted good! He wasn’t hungry anymore, and with a smile on his little turtle face, he began to trudge back upstream.

As he walked back to his nest, the Turtle thought about what Max had said. He wondered if he had a Master who left that worm for him. He thought about Cranky Crane and Sassy Squirrel, and he realized that he didn’t have to be as fast or as strong as they were – there would be enough food for him. If you worry too much, he thought, you’ll miss the worm that’s right in front of you.

-Matthew 6:25-33