Salvation is of the Lord!

But sometimes it’s from Deniese, too. See, Tom Lewis has stashed a bunch of his stuff at our house and that includes his pet snake. Bleah! But we tolerated that as long as it never comes out of its box and as long as there is a clear understanding that if it does it will be dead, headless, end of story the moment I find it.

That’s not so bad, since it’s mostly out of sight and out of mind. But Tom, before he left this past Wednesday, bought a rat to feed it. He didn’t buy it on Wednesday, he’s had it for several days before that. Apparently Dave and Tom have been dropping it in the snake’s cage and the snake isn’t hungry. So they fish it out (a hungry rat can hurt a snake) and it goes back in its very spartan box. After several days of this torture they go off to take Holly to Ohio. They leave the rat in its little box – no food, no water, no comforts, and in plain sight of the snake (and the snake in plain site of the rat!) not intending to come back for 5 or 6 days.

That’s just plain cruel, even to a rat. So Deniese, doer of all good deeds, first said she was going to feed the rat a little. It was so hungry it would eat anything that could fit between the bars. Then she wanted to give it a little water. Soon she’d set up the old hamster cage for it and was shaking it out of its box in there. For its own part, the nasty ugly critter with the icky feet and smooth nude tail looked at her with its awful pink eyes and resisted all efforts to help itself. Finally though it got into the cage, kicking and climbing in vain to get back into its horrible little box she shook it out of.

In the end, Deniese won. The rat seems very happy in the much larger cage, with food, water, and even some bedding which it made a little nest in. It eats from Deniese’s hand and responds to her soft voice of encouragement. I actually heard her say it was “cute” in a way – I guess as cute as a pointy headed critter can be. It does flair its ears out and seems curious about us. I even saw it tipping its head side to side, like our dogs do when they are trying to figure something out. I don’t know what she’s going to do when the time comes to clean the cage, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

As nasty as a rat is, as sinners we are much nastier. Yet God sees some good in us, and shows us mercy. He loves the unlovable! We’re just horrible creatures of hideous, disgusting sin to him yet he’s prepared a better place for us. We don’t want to leave our awful lives that really offer us no real spiritual nourishment or comfort to our souls. Does God shake us out of our box by causing things to happen to us that force us to deal with him or consider our state? Is the change, even when we see the good in it, so hard for us that we resist so strongly leaving our empty, purposeless lives?

Yet, if we give God a chance we have spiritual comfort. We are safe, and fed from his hand with the word he provides us. After all that, does God find us appealing? We are far more than “pets” to him; he adopts us as children. All these wonderful things we have if we are only willing to give up clinging to a life that offers so little comforts.

If the rat hand simply refused Deniese’s patient attempts to give him a better life, he would have ended up staying in that little box. Deniese would have given it a little water, a little food, but in the end it would end up being what we will become if we likewise refuse to accept the loving kindness and mercy that God offers:

Snake food.

Randy