Unintended Environmentalist

As I walked up the steps to the second floor entrance of the building I work in, a dark blotch on one of the steps caught my eye.  I looked down to see a brown, rather ordinary moth.  Not exactly like the one pictured here, it had a darker, coffee-colored tint and a thin orange line on the edges of its wings.  Why I didn't just walk on is a bit of a puzzle.  In any case, it occurred to me that this moth was going to get squished sitting there.  I have a couple of motivations for not wanting that to happen.  One is that I don't like unnecessarily squishing creatures in general.  (What constitutes a 'necessary' squishing of one of God's creatures is a subject for another time).  The other is I really do not like the sensation of squishing something under my foot.  Of course, snails are THE WORST.  You know, the crunch and slide feeling when that happens.  Don't you?  Of course you do.  Ick.

So, with roughly equal measures of compassion for the moth and for fellow humans who prefer not to squish them, I gave the moth a gentle nudge.  It fluttered off in that ungainly way that moths do.  However, as I cannot fly at all, the fact that the moth can even get airborne is a cause of wonder.  Just as I turned to continue up the stairs, a small bird swooped down, snagged the moth, and flew back into the tree it had come from.  I have seen hawks flying around with prey in their claws and I know from watching that excellent Pixar nature documentary "A Bug's Life" that birds do eat bugs.  This was my first experience with it in action.  Now, it very well could be that the moth would have met a similar fate without my "help".  But, as I thought about that sequence of events, I wondered: how often do I truly know how to do good?  How often do my attempts at fixing a problem have unintended consequences?  A small thing, really.  A moth, which in the best of circumstances may live a few months, plucked out of the air and gone.  Then I also remembered, my life, too is only a few drops in the span of eternity and I need wisdom to make the most of my days (Psalm 90:12).