Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare.
–Psalm 124: 7
ASPCA ads pleading for donations bombard my TV screen nightly. It’s that time of year–the holidays and cold winter days in the northern hemisphere–when they hope that flashing photos of shivering dogs and cats left abandoned on the streets will lead you to your pocketbooks if not their overflowing shelters. Neither, a bad idea.
Around the world, there are plenty of homeless and abandoned animals, animals who once might have been pets but who became as displaced as the families they lived with. Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine who needs assistance more–the animals left in the cold or the people who wandered away.
In Christ’s time, his family fled, too–into the desert to avoid Herod’s sword. The massacre of all boys in Bethlehem under two–the death of Holy Innocents. In our time, how many innocents perish from our contemporary swords? Contemporary armies. Starvation. Poverty. Disease. Homelessness. Drugs.
My two little rescue cats escaped a “kill-shelter” in Tennessee, hours before their mother was euthanized. And they came and rescued our souls.
How much larger the other rescues? How much more complicated? Almost too large to comprehend or to do something about.
But the soul’s rescue doesn’t require armies nor battalions of guns. Not even God could spare the Holy Innocents. Michael and I couldn’t rescue more than two cats.
One good thought. One small prayer. They are powerful actions.
For others, God has provided weapons–a skill, a pen, a check, a willingness to volunteer.
And for some, God asks faith. That He is there when there seems no rescue. Amidst the fear, the loneliness and abandonment.
He asks that for all of us–when we see those struggling with faith and when we struggle with our own.
Our rescue, like Susie’s and Delia’s, is close at hand. God wants you to know that. You can always depend on Him.