All in A Day's Work

“Our whole family has lice!” the 12-year-old announced guilelessly when I picked her up for church. What? Now she tells me! I had sat between her and her 7-year-old brother that morning, and at one point I impulsively kissed his head bending so sweetly over his Sunday School paper!

“All but me, I don’t have them!” she hurriedly added. “She couldn’t find any in my hair.” She told me her mother had looked thoroughly. Now it made sense that her younger sister told me this morning she was leaving after Sunday School for “personal reasons”!

Lice! The bane of school kids everywhere. Once in Mississippi one of my kids pointed out a woman at a garage sale, saying, “Oh no! The Lice Lady!” It was the dignified public health nurse who had earned that moniker by checking heads at school.

Maybe I should tell the pastor’s wife, if she doesn’t already know. What a delicate subject and situation! I had read that they are not spread by hats and scarves or using others’ combs and brushes, but by direct head-to-head contact. (Is my head itching, or am I just imagining it?)

Just yesterday I was reading the Bible portion of the one-year reading plan which happened to be 2 Timothy 4, Paul’s earnest exhortation to Timothy. (In it, there is a reference to “itching ears”, but not quite the same thing.) Paul was suffering in the cold, damp dungeon and reminded Timothy to bring his cloak, or coat, when he came. He also wanted the books (maybe portions of the Old Testament) and parchments, perhaps for more writing material.

Many of Paul’s “friends” had forsaken him. “Only Luke is with me,” he says in verse 11. Luke, a physician, was no doubt much comfort to him in his health needs, besides which he was a gifted writer, which had to be helpful. Paul said he was already being “poured out like a drink offering,” as his time of departure was at hand (4:21).

Kind of puts things like the risk of getting head lice from picking up Sunday School kids into perspective, doesn’t it?