Oct. 25, 2005

"Fending off a Lion"

Mark 2:1-12

In the book A Horse and His Boy, Shasta and Aravis are on horseback running from the Calormene army when the following scene takes place.

Before they reached him, the lion rose on its hind legs, larger than you would have believed a lion could be, and jabbed at Aravis with its right paw. Shasta could see all the terrible claws extended. Aravis screamed and reeled in the saddle. The lion was tearing her shoulders. Shasta, half mad with horror, managed to lurch toward the brute. He had no weapon, not even a stick or a stone. He shouted, idiotically, at the lion as one would at a dog. “Go home! Go home!” For a fraction of a second he was staring right into its wide-opened, raging mouth. Then, to his utter astonishment, the lion, still on its hind legs, checked itself suddenly, turned head over heels, picked itself up, and rushed away.

In this story, Shasta comes to the rescue of his new friend Aravis, even when it could have placed his own life in jeopardy. In the story found in Mark 2:1-12, four men place their own life in harms way as the cut a whole in the roof of a house to lower a paralyzed man on a matt to Jesus. In both these cases, we see examples of people risking their own well being in order to help someone else. I would call them “real heroes” We all need to be a hero to somebody else and lead them to Jesus Christ.