Owl Pellets
Our family has been camping at a national park every summer for the past 30 years. When our daughter was 6-11 years old, there was a daily Ranger program of fun nature classes for kids in which she was eager to participate. As we checked in every year, she’d get the schedule and pick out the ones she wanted to go to (all of them). She learned about water critters, snakes, insects, and other animals present in the park.
One year, they had a class in owl pellets. She came back from her trip to the amphitheater, beaming with her bag of owl pellets. She learned that an owl swallows a mouse whole and digests much of it before it regurgitates the skeleton in a pellet resembling dried mud. (Amazing and disgusting at the same time!) She had three pellets in a Ziplok bag and a diagram of a skeleton, telling me that I HAD to put them back together for her. She wanted me to make order out of chaos. There are 223-225 bones in a mouse skeleton, more than the 206 in the human body!
You can imagine my reaction. First off, I did not relish the idea of picking through owl gunk for tiny bones. Second, they would have been SOOOOO tiny for something that’s less than 2” long fully grown that it would have been very difficult. Anyway, we brought the bag and the diagram home and never mentioned them again; after a few years of being tucked away, they were thrown out.
As we look at the craziness of our world, it’s like looking at owl pellets. Where do we begin to sort it out? Gender identification confusion, wrong pronouns, DEI, woke agendas, wars and turmoil across the globe…it can get depressing and overwhelming. Families are broken and hurting. Owl pellets. Open borders letting in good people and criminal elements, terrorists, fentanyl, gangs, crime…owl pellets. What are we to do?
We stand for truth. We stand for Jesus. We follow Him. It isn’t necessarily popular and it certainly won’t be easy. Politics isn’t going to put our world back together. Social programs, UN decisions, miracle cures, AI—they may affect lives, but they won’t change a fallen world. Change needs to happen—but from the heart out. Only Jesus. Jesus only.
Noah was the only man in the world during his time who stood for what is right. He and his small family—eight people in all—survived the judgment on mankind during the flood. It wasn’t easy listening to the ridicule of the crowds during the many years he spent building the ark.
Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den for refusing to bow down before a statue and STOP worshiping the living God. He was in that den with no other people, but God was with him.
Ezekiel tells the story of how God would judge His people for their disobedience. At one point, there are six executioners and a man in linen with a writing case. God told the man in linen to put a mark on the forehead of the men who sigh and groan over the abominations being committed in Jerusalem, then He tells the executioners to slay everyone who does NOT have the mark, starting with His sanctuary.
“And He said to them, “Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!” Thus they went out and struck down the people in the city. As they were striking the people and I alone was left…. Ezekiel 9:7-8a
Ezekiel said, “…and I alone was left.” He was the only one with the mark! He was definitely unpopular, but God called him to speak for Him. Perhaps all he could see was owl pellets.
Sometimes God calls us to specific things, to take a stand for or against, and it may be hard. We may be alone and have difficulty making sense out of the chaos, but He also promises to be with us, to give us His strength and His wisdom--even when it goes against the grain. What we face in the future on this earth is uncertain, but what we face in eternity is glorious! Right now, we have to live among the owl pellets, assured that He WILL accomplish all that is in His plan. He won’t put the world back together, but He does want to redeem broken lives. There will be a NEW heaven and a NEW earth; we will be in relationship to Him the way He intended in the beginning.
For now, let us follow Jesus and be about the Father’s will of sharing the Good News, that none would perish in our sphere of influence.
