Mares Eat Oats

Mares Eat Oats
and Does Eat Oats
and Little Lambs Eat Ivy
A kid'l eat Ivy too-
Wouldn't you?

And if the words sound queer
and funny to your ear
a little bit gipsy and jivey

Just sing
Mares Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats
and Little Lambs Eat Ivy
A kid'l eat Ivy too,
wouldn't you.

That was a song my tone deaf Father used to sing to me. If you say it really fast it gets funny. He used to sing it as we were going to the store, or around the house when we were little. While my Dad passed away a decade ago now, the song pops back into my head at the most unusual times.
It seems to serve this purpose now: to remind me that Dad is still watching,the maker of Mares, Does and little lambs and Kids is still watching, and amidst the chaos, the conflict, the angst, the uncertainty of life, the worry, the drama, the wars, the loss, the disputations, the heartache, the tensions, and the good and bad grief, that there is a plan, and logic to it- that God is still in control, and he made things to make sense. Mares and Does after all still and always will eat oats. They are made that way. It works for them. Little lambs and kids (as in goat babies)-well, they apparently still eat ivy.
War will decimate millions of homes half a world away, and bring back tens of thousands of veterans with half a brain and half their limbs. Aids will decimate millions of homes half a world away and create millions of black orphaned children. Hurricaines and Tsunamis will wipe out villages and coastal cities half a world and a few states away. We now deny torturing prisoners of war and have clandestine foreign detention centers in which to do it.
And Mares still eat oats, Does eat oats, and Little Lambs Eat Ivy. And did you know that Kids by the way do too? We still have little lambs don't we? Someone check on that.
Somehow, God designed it, is still in control, sense is to be found somewhere in it's natural order if we look and pray hard enough to find it--which, not just deistically clicking along with the regularity of disinterested clockwork, but watched after intently minute by minute by an unsleeping God, begs the question, "wouldn't you?" And still there are born little lambs- who eat Ivy. Little lambs- as a sign- that God has not given up on the world.

We are profoundly disturbing the natural order.

The God of Israel never sleeps. I'm having trouble myself.
The least we can do is say Thanks for watching.