Catching Idle Butterflies

Testing God

You’ve heard it said to never put God to the test. Doing so can lead to sometimes unexpected consequences, as Dave found out as a teenager:

Snaking through the little town of Linton, North Dakota is Apple Creek. It’s shallow in many spots, too shallow for huge carp to swim around in. At least that’s what everyone thought until one day as Dave was walking along the edge he spotted dozens of carp swimming around in a pool at the edge of the creek. He ran back to his grandmother’s house and described all the fish he saw and asked if he could go fishing.

His uncle Ben said, “No. There’s no fish in there.”

“But I saw them,” Dave protested.

“You were mistaken. There are no carp in Apple Creek.”

Dave’s parents, uncles and grandmother began discussing a trip to Bismarck (about 60 miles northwest of Linton). Dave’s older brother, Mark, asked, “Can I stay here?”

Their dad thought about it and said, “Yeah, you’re old enough. You can stay.”

Dave piped up and asked, “Can I stay, too?”

“No. You have to come with us.”

So while Dave endured shopping in Bismarck with his parents and other siblings, Mark and Uncle Ben went fishing — in the very pond that Ben had told Dave there was no possibility of fish being there.

When they returned from Bismarck, Dave saw the huge pile of carp they had caught in his pond.

Dave ran back to the creek and discovered they had taken every single fish. So even if he could fish now, there was nothing to catch.

He then walked along the gravel road back to the house, a car passing him by once in a while.

Feeling as though the entire world had turned against him he thought, “If God does exist, the next time a car comes by, I bet He’ll throw a rock at me.”

Not thirty seconds later, a car rushed by and a rock shot out from underneath a tire, thwacking Dave in his left shoulder.

More startled than hurt, he laughed and thought, “I guess there is a God.”