It was Saturday morning, the sun playing off rumpled scarecrows displayed upon a shelf near the entrance of the supermarket. Slouch hats bedecked with sunflowers covered shocks of orange yarn spilling upon shoulders, peeking from shirts and pants legs—nothing uptight about these field-warriors. Their stitched grins and rolling black eyes seized my imagination.

“Would you look at that! I must have one!” I said while loosening the scarf around my neck and stomping slush from my boots. Gone were the leach-like doldrums that had enveloped my spirit from the night before. In the face of such absurdity, there was no room for such nastiness.

That was decades ago. Since then, I’ve showcased my scarecrow in rooms around my house to remind me of the disarming power of humor.

But there’s more to this scarecrow image than the restoration of psychic balance. I’ve grown to equate it with God-Power within my depths. When flooded by untoward symptoms of my terminal illness, I know to shut down, and in the company of my scarecrow wait for the emergence of the new normal with its “wee small voice.” With it, comes new rumpledness—stark reminders of my humanness with its graced foibles.

So the scarecrow’s resilience in fending off predator birds, enduring seasonal drenchings, and waving hellos to the sun heartens me as I wait, moment by moment. This is God’s work.