Keturah was just about 5 or 6 years old. Quite naturally, her understanding of the microbe world had not matured.
The septic tank needed to be drained just behind our house at Tenwek and as my friend Hal Burchel who was also our neighbor at the time, relates the story, Keturah was rather dangerously close to the open manhole cover.
“Be careful that you don’t drop in Keturah!” That was the advice Hal gave.
Keturah looked up at uncle Hal and exclaimed: “It’s okay uncle Hal, I can swim!”
So it is with my own naïve nature about life. I can be in the midst of some very dangerous situations, and rather than cry out for help, I pretend that the water is fine. “Jump on in and grab one of these life preservers!”
I have been told that the best way to get out of a hole is to first stop digging and then climb out.
My pride will most often prevent me from stop digging. “This is no hole, I exclaim, only a small pit within which I will find the true treasures I am seeking.” Then I will insist that it is not that deep and those floating things are actually life preservers.
We must all recognize our desire to save face at all cost and how that negatively impacts the logical, lifesaving choices we should take.
Swimming in stool eventually gets rather disgusting, so I must eventually climb out, clean up and admit that the choice to look into the manhole cover was not very bright at all.
Keturah recognized it even at her young age. I must remember it even now.
Psalm 40:2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings.