Cow Stories: Farm and Faith

Dh is loving the cow/calf aspect of his new job. It’s calving season, a time when rescuing little calves becomes an hourly occurrence. Especially when they all want to be born on wintry nights such as we’ve had lately. At last measure, we had 6 inches of snow on the ground. My cowboy and the ranchers he works for will be taking shifts throughout the night, dh’s starts at 4 A.M., which means he leaves home at 3 A.M.

So often his “cow stories” of the day get me to thinking about spiritual parallels…weird, huh?

The ice/sleet storm that hit us last week left ponds frozen 8″ thick in spots. Dh told me about a winter long ago when he’d run a hot wire fence around a pasture pond to keep the cattle off the precarious ice. You’d think that was kind of harsh, an electrical jolt to each cow whose only offense was wanting a drink, right? Well, a local cattleman lost 16 head the other day. They’d gone out on the pond for a drink and the ice broke sucking them down in three different places. They’re still trapped under the ice, and what a mess they’re going to have wenching them out of there when things thaw.

I’m sure you see the obvious parallels between the above story and us, God’s wayward ones. After all, He continually refers to us as sheep in the Bible.

Today, a baby calf needed a mother. And a mother cow needed a calf. They’d each lost one or the other. Dh and his co-worker tried everything to get the bereft mother to accept another cow’s calf. They made sure the mama cow still had plenty of milk–she did; they rubbed her manure all over the baby, hoping her scent on it would help her take to it. It didn’t. They ended up having to remove the entire hide from her dead calf and wrap the living calf in it. Immediately she started bawling (mooing) in recognition of her baby. If you’ve never been in a pen of cows/calves you can’t appreciate the deafening racket they put up trying to keep near to one another!

The spiritual parallel of this is God can’t look at us in our sin. He can accept us only through the sacrifice of His son, Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins. When God sees us, sinful man, He sees instead, thanks to our redemption, Jesus–whose blood has covered us in every way. Just like the mother cow cannot accept a calf that is not hers by blood.**

After dh told us about the calf-swap, my girls asked, “Will the mama cow still accept the calf once the other calf’s skin is taken off?” He then explained that as soon as her milk had been through this calf’s system, she’d know by his manure that he was hers.

Okay, obviously, I have a strange way of relating even things like this to scripture, but doesn’t this make you think of how we’re to be fed and nourished by God’s word, so we can fulfill the scripture that says, “By their fruit you shall know them”?

Before God created us, He and the members of the Trinity knew that ultimately, Jesus would have to take on the sins of the world. Not one of us humans is unblemished enough to be worthy of being called God’s child. No matter how good we say we are, if we don’t believe in the truth of Christ’s sacrifice and our need for a Saviour, we’re going to hell.

Unbelief is the only unforgivable sin. I’m so glad for John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

God is the Father of the fatherless. The father of all fathers. Eternal life in His family–the choice is all yours, thanks to Jesus’ redeeming sacrifice.

His life for ours.

**I first heard it explained this way in Fourth Dawn, a Brock and Bodie Thoene book, one of the AD Chronicles series…only they used sheep, not cattle…this is a fictional series surrounding the life and times of Christ and I highly recommend it. Btw, the sixth AD book will be out in March…