A friend was telling me about the adoption of a calf that
had been separated from its mother. The calf had been a twin, and the mother
had chosen from the time of the birth of her offspring to care for the other sibling.
But the weaker calf died, and once it was gone, the mother cow no longer wished
to tend to the living calf. So the calf was adopted by the compassionate next
door neighbor. A special place in the yard was fenced and the woman fed the
calf straight from a bottle.
Over time this calf and its caregiver grew to be very close.
Sometimes it was treated almost as if it were a human. It had also been
periodically placed among the sheep and would make sheep sounds now and then.
After a while a donkey was put inside the calf’s fence in order to keep the
coyotes away. Finally, it was decided that another older cow needed to be
placed inside the fence. Why? Because the calf had never seen a reflection of
itself. It didn’t know if it was a sheep, a donkey, or even a human. It needed
to be with one of its own kind. It needed an example cow. Sometimes you need to
have a cow.
When God created the heavens and the earth, He made the animals
to be creatures after their own kind. They each had the seed within themselves to
reproduce offspring and raise them to adulthood. Animals of similar kind
congregated and became communities of creatures with a common identity and specific
design. It was in God’s plan for every creature to know its kind and fulfill
the purpose for which it had been created.
Human beings were created in the same way. The only
difference was that they were also made with an eternal spirit, fashioned after
the image of God. Ironically, they lost their identity and purpose and forgot
who they were. So God created a new community. He fenced them in. And then He
sent Jesus. Even then God’s people did not understand. It was only after the
Son of God had died that they realized He had come to save them and to be their
example. Jesus had been brought into the confines of the human world to save
mankind from itself. He came to solve man’s identity crisis. He came to show
the reflection of God and to be the ultimate example of the potential of men.
Every day in our world I meet
people who are going through life without understanding who they are and why
they are here. You see, it is entirely possible for you to exist in a pen. You
can be fed with milk from a bottle. You can grow and mature into adulthood. You
can live a long life and experience health and all of the blessings of the
physical world. But if you don’t know what you are supposed to be, if you don’t
have the right example, then you will never really know who you are.
That little calf needed a cow.
And we needed Jesus. And we still need Him.
“As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man
named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he
arose and followed Him.” – Matthew 9:9
