Editor’s note: Amos is a church mouse, who types by hopping on the computer keyboard, but he can’t operate the capital shift, and he shuns punctuation marks — except hyphens and dashes. freddy gets encouraged freddy the flea has been having some problems lately boss his father is an alcoholic — a drunken flea is a pitiful sight indeed — so his home life hasn t been going well and of course that s affected freddy s job with the flea circus his timing is off he keeps making the elephants sneeze and the ringmaster says he s going to fire freddy and toss him back to the garbage detail life looks so hopeless freddy moaned i thought being a christian meant everything is supposed to go well and work out great what s happened to me says he am i not a christian flea anymore sure you are says virgil the praying mantis who hopped along just about then i haven t been a christian flea very long says freddy maybe i m not where i m supposed to be maybe a real christian flea oughta be in ministry instead of in a circus menagerie no you re where you re supposed to be says virgil you re just working up too much anxiety did you ever notice says he with a smile — that is if a praying mantis can smile — that when the lord told the discouraged fishermen in john twenty-one to cast their nets again that it was in the same old place right where they had caught nothing no i never thought about that says freddy not sure where virgil was headed with this sometimes we think that if we can get off to some new place when we get discouraged then trying again would be an easier task to do if we could be somebody else or go somewhere else or do something else it might not be so hard to have fresh faith and courage right i guess so says freddy life would be much easier then i think is that what i need to do no says virgil you re not listening to me you see it s the same old net in the same old pond for most of us the old temptations are to be overcome the old faults are to be conquered the old trials and discouragements we failed at yesterday are to be faced again today then virgil looked little freddy square in the eyes and says we must win success where we are if we win at all — and it s the master himself who after all these tiring disheartening failures bids us to try again — and he enables us by his power to hang in there stay with it and overcome it all jesus really does care about little christian fleas like thee says he life will once again ring with victory and your boat filled with abundance you ll see amos