No Share in Understanding
The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love? For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground, forgetting that a foot may crush them and that the wild beast may trample them. She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers; though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear, because God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding. When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider.
Job 39:13–18
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No Share in Understanding
If ever there was a comical and nonsensical animal, the ostrich is it. A tiny head with large eyes, resting on a long skinny neck. A huge body with massive muscular legs, but tiny wings incapable of flight. The ostrich doesn’t seem to make sense. Her behavior towards her young is even more baffling. Her large eggs are often left unattended, vulnerable to being destroyed or eaten. She seems almost cruel in her care for her young. Nonetheless, the ostrich survives. God provides for them even if we don’t understand how or why. So it is which much of God’s creation, we simply do not understand how and why it works, only that it does and that God is in control. The problem for us is that we often forget that last part, that God is in control. We assume our own intelligence is sufficient to understand all of God’s ways and even to manipulate them. We believe ourselves capable of being equal, if not superior, to God. The tragic result of course is all around us. Sin and death are constant reminders of man’s hubris. Pain and suffering, disease and destruction lay bare the true depth of our understanding of God’s power and our lack thereof. But just as God does not leave the ostrich to destruction, neither does He abandon us. He does something so remarkable that we can’t truly understand it. He sends His only Son to die for us sinners. He takes the death of His perfect sinless Son in exchange for the life of us poor miserable sinners. And so now we have life and have it in abundance. We have a broken relationship with our Father restored. And death and the devil no longer have a claim on us, they have been defeated.
Job 39:13–18
+
No Share in Understanding
If ever there was a comical and nonsensical animal, the ostrich is it. A tiny head with large eyes, resting on a long skinny neck. A huge body with massive muscular legs, but tiny wings incapable of flight. The ostrich doesn’t seem to make sense. Her behavior towards her young is even more baffling. Her large eggs are often left unattended, vulnerable to being destroyed or eaten. She seems almost cruel in her care for her young. Nonetheless, the ostrich survives. God provides for them even if we don’t understand how or why. So it is which much of God’s creation, we simply do not understand how and why it works, only that it does and that God is in control. The problem for us is that we often forget that last part, that God is in control. We assume our own intelligence is sufficient to understand all of God’s ways and even to manipulate them. We believe ourselves capable of being equal, if not superior, to God. The tragic result of course is all around us. Sin and death are constant reminders of man’s hubris. Pain and suffering, disease and destruction lay bare the true depth of our understanding of God’s power and our lack thereof. But just as God does not leave the ostrich to destruction, neither does He abandon us. He does something so remarkable that we can’t truly understand it. He sends His only Son to die for us sinners. He takes the death of His perfect sinless Son in exchange for the life of us poor miserable sinners. And so now we have life and have it in abundance. We have a broken relationship with our Father restored. And death and the devil no longer have a claim on us, they have been defeated.
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