PETS

                                                                            Pets

One I snapped in Springsure, Queensland

        Anyone who has gone through the trauma of losing a family pet knows how attached we become to them. Maybe your pet has been accidently run over by a car. Or worse, maybe someone has killed it intentionally. There are times when we have had to have an elderly pet put down. The death of a pet bird, cat, dog, or even a goldfish, can bring on grief. It can leave us heartbroken. We can fall in love with our pets and mourn their loss.

There is a well-known nursery rhyme called “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” One can picture the lamb following Mary everywhere she went. There is also a Bible story about a poor family that owned a pet lamb, their only lamb. Its death was used to tug the tender heartstrings of the famous harp player and songwriter, David, the shepherd king, after his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. It was designed to bring about his repentance and for him to seek God’s mercy.

“The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, ‘There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. ‘Now a traveller came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveller who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.’ David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’ (2 Sam. 12:1-6).

Could you imagine how the family that had their pet lamb stolen, slain, and then eaten by someone would have felt? How would you feel? Would you feel like David did? He burned with anger towards him. Why? “Because he did such a thing and had no pity.” It was then that Nathan sprung his trap by saying to David, “You are the man!”

Image from Web

        The Bible speaks of Jesus as, “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8b). This means that God always had it in mind to have His incarnate Son killed by wicked human beings. “This Man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross” (Acts 2:23). Are we reminded of the Lord’s messenger Nathan’s parable here? Nathan, by saying to David, “You are the man!” made the message personal. In so doing, as the Spirit enabled, he showed up David’s sins of adultery, murder, theft, covetousness, etc. By illustrating that David was the man that killed the lamb, he brought about David’s conviction.

Have you recognised that this is what God is doing with His Gospel whenever you hear it? The heart of the Gospel is about the death of His only begotten Son, i.e., “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29b). A line in the hymn, How Deep the Father’s Love, captures the idea, “It was my sin that held Him there, Until it was accomplished, His dying breath has brought me life, I know that it is finished.” Can you see that you are the one that killed the Lamb? Has God confronted you and convicted you of your sins yet? And have you, like David, begged for His forgiveness?