The Cat and The Bird
..............................................................................................................
It was one of those all too infrequent summer mornings when nature was absolutely at its best. My wife and I were sitting outside having a cup of coffee before the Morning Service. We looked out over the pasture at the trees rising gracefully towards the blue sky. The birds were singing sweetly in the hedgerows, and the flowers were blooming profusely in their full beauty.
I looked up and directly above me the moon was still visible, and to my left the sun was shining brightly in the sky. I thought of the scripture in Genesis 1: 16, "And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." We were both struck by the beautiful world which God made.
My mind then turned to an incident, ugly and cruel,
which had occurred the evening before. The cat
caught an unsuspecting little bird and was playing
with it on the lawn. After a rescue effort with the
aid of a long handled brush, my wife placed it in
a box hoping for a recovery. That evening the
little bird did show some signs of recovery; regretfully,
in the morning, it had passed away. That incident
reminds us of cruelty and death which pervades the
world all around us.
Undeniably, this is a beautiful world, yet it is blighted by sin. Through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, when they ate of the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, sin passed upon all mankind (Rom. 5:19). God cursed the earth because of man's disobedience. The biggest tragedy of all is that sin broke man's communion with God, separating us from Him, and leaving us at enmity with God. Therefore, in order for God to preserve His own righteousness, He had to demand that a penalty for sin be paid. We are told in the Bible that, ''without the shedding of blood there is no remission,'' There was nobody on earth worthy to redeem mankind, no man was without sin, consequently none could die for the sins of others.
The Lord Jesus, was willing to leave the glory of heaven and take on a body of human flesh, so that He could pay the penalty for sin by dying on Calvary's cross. John 10:18, Jesus said, ''No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.''
The Gospel of John, chapter 1, tells us who the Lord Jesus was; He was equal with God, and He was God. Notwithstanding, He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross, and in Matthew 27 we read that while He hung on the cross, from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was darkness over all the land. We will never know how much our Saviour suffered during those hours when God laid our sins on Him. God turned His back on His Son because He was bearing our sins in His body on the tree. He later cried in triumph, ''It is finished.'' signifying that the work of redemption was completed and God was satisfied with the penalty paid.
John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Therefore, in order to obtain eternal life and have our sins forgiven, we must put our trust in the finished work of the Lord Jesus and we must depend on Christ alone and His precious shed blood.
M.C.
