Our heavenly father who gives rats their daily bread: a parable on Psalm 147,9

[Magdalenbrother]

It all happened on a fateful Christmas night, on a hill overlooking Rio de Janeiro. On that hot night, a single but pious mother, Gabriela, decided to go to Mass. Because her newborn baby cried a lot, she didn't take it with her but left it on her little bed, in her little makeshift hovel of plastic and cardboard sheets, thinking that "os angelinhos do Ceu" would take care of everything...

While she was singing "Hail to the newborn King" with her sweet, inimitable carioca accent, a dirty, hungry female rat sneaked into her place, saw the baby, who for a change-was it the grace of that very special night?- was sleeping peacefully, and devored its head in the twinkling of a starving rat's eye...

When God-fearing Gabriela came back, her baby was no more. She wept bitterly and cursed herself and the child's (eternally absent) father Jose (or was it Antonio???). But she cursed even more vehemently the heavenly Father and His angels, who had left the child without protection on such a holy night.

In the middle of her desperate imprecations and sobs, a short, plump angel who looked uncannily Asiatic appeared before her.

-You here? Gabriela gasped. You come too late, I'm afraid!
-Daughter of Cachoeirinha, why are you crying? Haven't you heard that "He gives the animals their food, to the ravens that cry"?
-Sorry, what I have heard is "No sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father" and "Fear ye not, ye are of more value than many sparrows"!
-But Jesus died an atrocious death at the hands of the Romans as a troublemaker. IMO, he should have feared more ...
-What do you mean? Are you deprecating o Senhor?
-In this incredibly vast and complex universe, every creature has a right to live and is important in God's eyes. Otherwise, why would He have created it?The rat that ate your baby was a mother too. Rats have to live. For the rat, your baby was food. The great Jewish sage Spinoza...
-I don't understand. Jesus...
-Even Jesus recognized that people often die in awful accidents not because they have sinned more than others, but because it had to happen that way. If a star explodes in a corner of the universe, the impact will be felt on earth. The crust will move and earthquakes will take place, in which hundreds of babies and their mothers will die.
-But my little, innocent rapazinho...
-The Buddha in one of his incarnations died giving himself as a food offering to a hungry tigress. This is an example for you to meditate on...
-What? You believe in reincarnation and preach Buddhism to me? You are not a Catholic angel, are you?
-Learn that:

"Heaven and Earth are ruthless
To them the ten Thousand Things are but as straw dogs
The sage too is ruthless
To him the people are but as straw dogs"

-You wretch! Bandido amarelo!
-Come on, Gabriela, would you be better off now if I had told you that your baby had to die because of the sexual sins of your grandfather Manuel or because God's will is "inscrutable"?
-I DON'T CARE FOR ANY EXPLANATIONS!!! Go out of this place and leave me with my beheaded baby and my grief. You never had a baby and God was never a mother: you cannot know what this means to ME!

[furay]

:outtie:

[Ken1Burton]

Cute Story, And there is a reality to it. The life and death part that is.

The Church is not very honest. Ask any young child who God saved from the Lions, they will tell you Daniel. But why do we stop there? and not tell them of all the believers who fed the lions. Or was it God feeding the Beasts? Either way, We tell them PART of the story, a very small part.

We preach that God will take care of you. But we know He might not. Give and it shall be given to you again, But in what form? We lie in God's name. And that is WE, For we have all done it at one time or another.

We teach children to pray "If I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." That is CUTE, Let's plant DOUBT in the Child, as if God might not take them.

God knows when the Smallest Sparrow falls, But God also feeds the cats. Reality is sickening in many ways. We as humans got a bit too far away from reality, Our meat is prepackaged, and does not look anything like a cow. We did not have to kill, gut, skin, etc

We see something squashed in the road, and it is too much to look at. We cry at death and death is all around us.

But Death is God's testing. Are you a believer or not? If a rat eats your child, where is the Child?

Every day God takes about 200,000 Home, Some days He sends a cyclone and takes Home a Million. Some we may know, some we may love, some we may not care if they left this earth at all. But every day, God take some.

Today we will die also. We never die on a Tommorow, it is always a TODAY when we die. And that is a READY OR NOT type of deal. The Shadow of death is life on earth, death is always there. Waiting.

He takes Home the Old, the young, the Sick, the healthy, the Mothers, the Dads, If He takes them without a lot of suffering on their part, Amen. For it is a bridge we all have to cross.

It might help to know Jesus had to fulfill every jot and tittle of the Old Testament prophecies, so THIS IS UNTO ALL MANKIND:

(DANIEL 9:24) Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon
thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of
sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy,
and to anoint the most Holy. (KJV)

Sin ended as Accountable unto man. And everyone gets the Righteousness of Christ on them as Job 33:26 shows. The SEAL stopped the Disciples and Paul from seeing sin ended as accountable unto man. They spoke a lot of error.

The Sheep are the WICKED seen in Jeremiah 12:1/3. Jesus renders them His righteousness so they fed the Hungry, clothed the naked, etc, They enter the Kingdom prepared for them from the Foundation of the World, and the Lamb is slain from the Foundation of the World which is GOLGOTHA.

There are many ways to get to God, rats provided one.

Ken

[Magdalenbrother]

Excellent reply, for which I send you 5 pearls. I'm looking for the Spinoza quotes to round off the head post.