NO EXCUSES
NO EXCUSES!!!
My sister is a dog-lover and over the years she and her family have kept dogs as pets and guard dogs. They have a soft spot for the Alsatian breed and their home has been home to generations of this breed from Sheba, to Emperor, to Frisky and more recently to Tundra. All their dogs have been and are still being very well taken care of and very well groomed. A couple of weeks ago, she was telling of how several years before, one of their dogs had had a litter of puppies which she did often enough. However, with this particular litter of about seven or eight puppies there was this one pup that just refused to nurse. So it would stay in a quiet corner on its own when all the other puppies were rushing to be nursed.
One day, my sister observed something; the momma dog suddenly got up at nursing time, left the other puppies and went in search of the ONE puppy that had refused to come to nurse. And my sister began to marvel at how very much this singular act was similar to what any human mother would do. No matter how many her offspring, a mother would never abandon a single one.
Then immediately, I remembered the following scripture:
“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish. Matthew 18:12 NLT
So here I am musing over this apparent similarity between what a human parent and an animal parent would do and also seeing an attribute of God being revealed through His creation. The care and concern displayed by this dog, itself a creation of God, is the same caring nature of God being revealed.
“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” Romans 1:20 NLT
And then again I remembered how our Heavenly Father is also sometimes referred to as “The Double-Breasted One” or “El-Shaddai”. El is translated as God while another word Shad which means breast is believed to be the origin of Shaddai. Another school of thought says Shaddai orginates from another word Sadu, which means mountain and is symbolic of power and strength.
This is the reason why El – Shaddai is translated “The Almighty God”, “The All sufficient God”.
(Reference for the above is: https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/name_god.cfm)
It’s been argued that babies need about six months of exclusive breast milk in order to achieve optimal growth and health. So as a momma dog or a human mother nurses their young, it is symbolic of the attribute of God’s all sufficiency as the double breasted one.
We only need to look around us more and see as God continues to reveal Himself through nature and creation.
Why not then make a conscious effort to write what ever we see around us that is a revelation of God and while we do this let us also teach them to the younger ones because honestly:
WE SHALL HAVE NO EXCUSES FOR NOT KNOWING GOD.
OLUYINKA EGO-MARTINS ©
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