Smiles and Faith

 

Smiles and Faith

Noel Laflin

7-6-22

Our friend Leo showed up bright and early this morning to start work on replacing an old section of fence that blew down during a Santa Ana Wind earlier this year. I righted the blown out section immediately afterward and jerry-rigged a workaround to hold it in place, but was happy to see a professional, not to mention the friendly Leo, bearing tools and replacement boards.

“Leo,” I said, “it’s good to see you my friend, but please no more baby hummingbird gifts this time, okay?”

As you may recall from a previous musing, it was Leo who found the orphaned kids abandoned in the street back on Memorial Day weekend as he was coming round to repair our front door (there is always something in need of fixing around here). He brought the two youngsters to me as he thought I knew something about the raising of an orphan bird or two.

I didn’t, but that was of no concern to Leo.  He had faith, apparently.

It all worked out well, in the end, but was a tremendous amount of work keeping one of the tiny kids alive for two weeks.  She, who David named Lucy (as in a diamond in the sky type Lucy), flew off to new adventures sometime in mid-June after her recuperation/revival.

Upon my pronouncement this morning about not bringing any more orphans our way, Leo merely smiled (he’s always smiling, by the way) and simply replied, “It was not me, my friend,” and then pointed upward.

“You’re saying God sent them to me?” I responded.

“Si,” he answered, still smiling, as he proceeded downstairs to start on the fence.

If God does work in mysterious ways, as some claim, then Leo is a fine messenger, as he is a man of both smiles and faith.

And he’s going to build us a fine new fence too. I’ve got faith in that, to be certain.