Today’s devotional comes from Jason's pen:
“Why do I need to spend so much time with my pig?”
“You want to walk your pig don’t you? You want to do well in competition don’t you? The better your relationship with your pig, the better you are going to do.”
Very frustrated and very impatient, he walked into his pig pen. I sat there and watched him pet his pig, hug his pig, and even ride his pig. He kept watching me to see if I saw what he was doing and ever so slowly a smile crept onto his face. He cleaned up his pen, and the pig kept messing it up immediately after he cleaned it. After he cleaned up his pen and played a little while longer he came back to the truck and got in.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“It was okay, I guess.”
We sat there and talked about spending time with the pig, and talked about how much easier walking the pig and guiding the pig will be once that relationship is even stronger.
This reminded me of God’s love. We talked about loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength yesterday. I wanted to mention a little more about his love today. We are like the pig. Yes, I am comparing us to pigs. We live in this world and every day we become dirtier and dirtier. We wallow and make a mess of our lives. We mess up things so easily because we want things our way. The pigs make such messes of their pens. You can fill up their food and water and they dump it within minutes. Isn’t that how we are sometimes? Unlike the boy mentioned earlier though, God wants to spend so much time with us. He wants all of us, all the time, not just what we supposedly give him on Sundays. Maybe if we allowed ourselves to spend more time with him, our lives wouldn’t be more like the pig pens.
There was a man in the Bible who was known as a sinner because of his occupation. The story goes like this:
“After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” Luke 5:27-32
Levi was a pig. He lived in sin. He would take more money than he was supposed to and like other tax collectors was very hated by the community. Jesus went and spent time with him. Jesus continued to spend time with Levi and the other disciples. The more time they spent together, the closer they became. The more the disciples learned, the easier it became for them to live changed lives and to share that life with those around them. They used to be pigs, living like the world, living in the world. Levi never would have become the man he was, had he not spent time with the Savior. He would have died a tax collector, a thief, and a hated man. He would have died, nothing but a pig. He learned how to walk, by walking with the Savior.
Blessings,
Jason
