Fully Rely On God

On our last tour of duty in Germany we met a charming couple who lived in the building next to us.  He was a Colonel in the Army and his British wife had been an actress in London.  Their home was lovely and I fell in love with her collection of Staffordshire dogs that she displayed on a large table placed behind her couch.  I decided that I wanted a collection also, and during a trip to Italy, I saw a winsome looking frog in a store window and decided to collect frogs!  Now it is forty years later and frogs are still finding their way into my collection.  I have collections among my collection--frog cups, frog teapots, frog pitchers, frog t-shirts, frog jewelry, frog planters, frog frames, stuffed frogs, children's frog books for my grandchildren and a few frog books for adults.  My email address is DonaFrog@comcast.net.  I have frogs from several foreign countries.  I have little, tiny frogs and very large frogs and every size in between.  


Probably the best known writing about frogs is the story of the fifth plague Moses brings against Pharaoh.  
1. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.
2. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with  frogs.
3. The river shall swarm with frogs; they shall come up into your palace, into  your bedchamber and your bed, and into the houses of your officials and of your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls.
4. The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials.'"
5. And the Lord said to Moses, "Say to Aaron,, 'Stretch our your hand with your staff over the rivers, the canals, and the pools, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.'"
6. So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.
7. But the magicians did the same by their secret arts, and brought frogs up on the land of Egypt.
8. Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron, and said, "Pray to the Lord to take away the frogs from me and my people,, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the Lord."
9. Moses said to Pharaoh, "Kindly tell me when I am to pray for you and for your officials and for your people, that the frogs may be removed from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile.
10. And he said "Tomorrow." Moses said, "'As you say! So that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God.
Exodus 8:1-10 NRSV


Pliny, the Roman author who  perished in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD had graphic ideas of the frog as a sex object. In his Natural History he gives particular directions telling how a husband might make his unfaithful wife take an aversion to her lover by means of a frog.
The Symbolic Frog, p. 118 in Frogs by Gerald Donaldson 


I do not love real frogs! I only find inanimate versions appealing! 


My friends, Chris and Jim, brought a gift for me to the retirement and gave it to me the day after, before they left to drive home.  It was a t-shirt with a frog on it which read FROG--Fully Rely On God, giving it's source as John 3:16.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."  My frogs took on a different meaning.  It struck me that I had been surrounded by the most promising message in the Bible.  The promise of eternal life. And I felt assured that I did not need to understand exactly how God worked, only that he did work.  And I needed only to rely on that.  It was a powerful realization.