A father stood along the fence line at a rodeo in Belton, Texas last month watching his son in a bull riding competition. His son was thrown from the bull and lay on the ground unresponsive as the bull stormed around the arena looking for someone to attack. That’s when the father sprung into action. He rushed out into the fray and laid on top of his son.
The bull charged at the two of them and threw the force of his giant head into them. The father took the brunt of the attack as his son’s shield. The bull was quickly distracted and removed from the scene. The father, Landis Hooks, and his son Cody escaped serious injury and walked away from the incident.
It’s easy to allow myself to think of the world as falling apart – AGAIN. It is easy to forget that all around us are people doing courageously kind and generous things. Yet, as millions of people are fleeing the war in Ukraine, millions of other people are opening their homes and their lives to receive them. One hundred years ago people from Ukraine and people from Poland were bitter enemies. Today the Polish people are giving shelter and hope to the Ukrainians flooding across the border. Many are driving to the points of entry and holding up signs that read, “I can take three people” or “I can take five.”
The world is a mess, again, but love and kindness can make ancestral enemies, friends.
The Bible is clear that war and evil are to be expected in a world where people choose to live without God. But when we feel the heartache of suffering, we can act against it. We can choose to help. We can choose to help someone close at hand. We can stand alongside those who are reaching out even from thousands of miles away. The fact that your heart aches for the pain of others is living breathing proof that evil has not won the day.
The expression of sin in the lives of people is painful, but this battle has been won. Jesus has triumphed over evil by taking it upon Himself. Your heart testifies to that spirit being in you too. Give, pray, seek God’s will in this moment, but do not despair. Sin and evil have lost and we await the final events and decisions that will end it all once and for all.
A boy was thrown from a bull in Texas, his father jumped in and laid himself on top of the unconscious form and took the blows that were headed his way. How like God, humans can sometimes be!
Blessings,
Walt
You can see that father’s love here. – Watch it here.
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