It was a bitterly cold winter day, and my breath was hanging visibly in the air each time I breathed out. I had just arrived at the church and was shivering as I walked from it to the fellowship hall. “How could it possibly be this cold?” I was muttering to myself, when suddenly I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye.
I looked down to the ground, and there was a tiny gray creature shivering in the cold.
My first instinct was “mouse,” but I quickly realized that the tiny creature was actually a mole. I did not know how it got out onto the concrete as opposed to being burrowed down in a nice warm hole somewhere, but I did know that it had no chance of surviving out there.
I forgot all about going to the fellowship hall and reached down and picked it up. I carried it inside the church, intending to find a box to put it in until I could figure out what to do with it.
But apparently the sudden burst of warmth from walking inside was all that was needed to snap it forcefully and dramatically out of its stupor. It started racing around inside my hands, and when it could not get out, it bit me.
I was not expecting that. At all.
I am afraid that I dropped the poor mole. I didn’t mean to, but I also was pretty shocked to have been bitten. When little Lova hit the vestibule carpet, she scurried off into a corner. (We named her Lova Mole – I am assuming it was a her – in honor of a church member whose last name is Mull).
My girls walked around the corner at just that moment and saw her fall and scamper.
“Dad!” they shrieked, “you brought a mouse into the church?!?”
“It’s a mole!” I shouted back while scampering after it. “Now help me catch this thing!”
We finally pinned little Lova in, and one of the girls handed me a box. I got the mole herded into it and breathed a sigh of relief. A few hours later, we handed her over to a local animal rehabilitator who assured us that she would care for her until she could be released safely back into the wild.
I tried to get into the swing of my workday after that, but something was gnawing at my mind just like that little insectivore had gnawed on my hand. When I got still and quiet for a bit, it finally came to me. That tiny creature, unable to comprehend my good intentions for it, bit the very hands that were reaching down to save it.
As Jesus looked over the city of Jerusalem one day, he did so with a broken heart. He came to seek and save those that were lost, but those in the city he loved so dearly rejected him. Matthew 23:37 tells us that he said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”
A storm was coming, and he wanted to be their protection, their covering wings, their cupping hands, but they bit him and pushed him away.
People still do the same thing today. Perhaps it is because, like that easily scared mole, they cannot bring themselves to see the great trouble they are in and the great love in the hands reaching down to pick them up.
But for those that put their fear aside and willingly place themselves in his hands, a most wonderful thing happens. John 10:27-29 says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”
Do you see the picture? The saved have placed themselves in his hands, and his hands are in the Father’s hands. There is no greater warmth, no greater love, no greater protection anywhere in the universe.
Never fear the best thing that could ever happen to you.
Bo Wagner is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., a widely traveled evangelist and the author of several book available on Amazon and at www.wordofhismouth.com. Email him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.