We’ve had some backyard chickens and they are really enjoyable. Such happy, peaceful little creatures. And they give you eggs! Unless…they get egg bound. Now this is not good for the chicken! Basically the poor hen’s egg gets stuck! Wow! And gross! The egg essentially blocks off their poop, so wet, diarrhea-like poop is one of the signs! This happened to one of our chickens. A quick Google of chicken first-aid mentioned giving the poor girl a warm bath to help relax the muscles and help the egg come out! The boys bravely performed the treatment and the chicken lived to lay more eggs.
But Monkey.
Monkey was an odd bird. She was a gray Easter Egger. The boys loved her and noticed one day that Monkey had the dreaded wet behind! But Monkey was also acting sick, so a call was made to Dad. Now what exactly Dad would do when he came home I did not know. But I was pretty certain one of two
things would happen. Monkey would either get a bath or a bullet.
Dad came home and scooped poor Monkey up and brought her in the house and into the boy’s bathtub. (I know!) He gently washed Monkey and warmed her up and massaged her…vent. 🤪 What a compassionate Dad!
A bath or a bullet. What do we deserve and what will our Father give us?
It seems we find the bullet a lot in the Old Testament. Only 8 people would survive on the ark. How many got the bullet? The OT is full of Philistines and a lot of “ites” getting the bullet.
But the bath.
In the New Testament we see Jesus coming in and eating with the sinners and mingling with the lepers and loving the prostitutes. His compassion is in full view.
Somehow the God of the Old and the God of the New, is both the bath and the bullet. Where His wrath begins and his grace ends is way too much for me to even come close to figuring out. Did His death really pay our ransom in full? End of story? Is believing in Him really all it takes as John 3:16 claims? But what about “works”? What about “our part”? Do we even have a part?
Deep ponderings thanks to Monkey.
I do know I desire the bath! I desire to see an unbelievable cracking of the sky and such wild, glorious, other-worldly angel beings and…our Father! Coming again! To give us the bath! It’s wild to think about, but promised all the same.