The Bible In the Soup

Stories are fun. Finally I am back with some more tales. The next few stories for children will be about a strange, but actually wonderful, community of houses that are built high in the air on stilts. Every child’s dream house! For several months every year the river rises and swishes around under the houses. This year twice the river has just gone beyond it’s supposed limits…it rose and rose and rose and then walked into those high houses! And that isn’t good, is it? So, here’s a story of a brother and sister in their stilt house facing an invasion of water! This actually could be a true story! And we are glad now that we have a new, modern wireless e-mail system…and the stories can ZIP to you! Duane Howe, tribal missionary in Brasil and an old story teller
Her smile was wrinkled. Her hair was motley. Her shorts were too tight and she wore no top. She sat on the board floor of her house and poked a drinking straw down through the cracks into the mirky, brown water underneath. Tatiane (Tah-chee-ah-nee) was just 9-years-old, but she had never seen the water come up this high under their house before. It wasn’t actually scary, but it also made her feel uncertain about the future. A few more inches and they’d be wading in the bedroom! “Cleoson! Cleoson! Where are you? The water is still coming up! I wish mother would hurry and come home!”
Cleoson was dark complected and had very rebellious black hair. Of course, the hair was not to be blamed too much, it had seldom ever seen a comb. When it got impossible, Mom just whacked it down to size again! “Shush, Tati, I’m getting bites! You might scare the fish away!” Very quietly Tatiane walked into the small room where she and her brother slept on the floor on a mattress. Cleoson was fishing out of the bedroom window with a short nylon string and a small hook on the end. He jerked the line and pulled a sucker fish out of the water, but it freed itself quickly and flopped back in the darkish soup. Plastic bags and pieces of styrofoam were floating by. Someone in a boat had come close to their house and made waves and the water lapped up through the cracks. The kids had put their mattress up on the small kitchen table. Nothing was any longer on the floor, unless it was something that could get wet and didn’t matter. Like the bananas.
“Look, Tati, there’s something black floating by! It looks like a book!” Cleoson quickly ran to get the first thing that had come to his mind…a broom. He stuck the handle way out and actually touched the black object, which was sitting in a plastic container…for all the world like Moses in the bulrushes! Hadn’t that story teller young woman just told them about baby Moses being set out in a flood in a basket? Tati crammed her head through the same small window and the kids tried to get the floating prize. But it was bobbling and going by much too fast. “Hurry Cleoson! It is going to be lost!” He stretched with all his body nearly out of the window but the broom handle was just a bit too short. It’s lost, he thought.
SPLASH! Cleoson was startled! Then he saw his little sister in the water swimming to the container. She had ran to the living room and dove out of the living room window and there she was going towards the floating object. She grabbed it and smiled back triumphantly and swam back to the house. She could practically swim in the door! “Look, Cleoson! It’s a Bible! Don’t you think it’s a Bible?” The kids had never really seen a Bible before, not up close anyway. But, yes, it was a Bible! They pulled it in. No name and no address. Whose was it? They quickly carried it to the kitchen table and the two of them crawled up and lay on their mattress treasuring their treasure. Cleoson, who could read well, just opened it and the verse he saw was “THE LORD SITS UPON THE FLOOD! YES, THE LORD SITS AS KING FOREVER! THE LORD WILL GIVE STRENGTH TO HIS PEOPLE; THE LORD WILL BLESS HIS PEOPLE WITH PEACE!” Psalm 29:10.
Cleoson said in a strange calm voice, “Tati, that means God will be with us even if the water comes up through the cracks! He will take care of us!” They both just smiled and waited for Mom to come.
And what about you? Aren’t you glad you live in a secure house without water running underneath it? Well, maybe that would be fun for a while, what do you think? But there are dozens and dozens of boys and girls who live in extremely poor houses like the kids in Stilt City. They just never had anything better and if Mom is there…it is home! Few have dads at home. Pray for the Stilt City kids as we go several times a week to tell them about Jesus and His love. And the One who sits on the flood!