Jun | 13 | Fiddling with Ferrets

Key Word:- CONSIDER

Title:- Fiddling with Ferrets

Galatians 2:10 They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.

I love shopping for unnecessary plastic objects. If it’s a bargain, if it’s cheap, then I want it! I mean, who knows when you’re going to need five, yes that’s right, five red plastic cookie cutters for just $1.99! So you can imagine how much I enjoy shopping at the 'Pound' shops, or the 'Dollar' stores. Out of all these treasure houses packed to the gunnels with discount items, ‘Big Lots’ is my present favourite, as they are particularly great for a speedy throughput of clearance crud. “Get it while its hot!” That’s what I say!

So while looking for some cheap cat food I was especially pleased, to come across the final bottle of ear cleaner for Ferrets. Yes sir, there it was, a shimmering undiscovered diamond amongst all the other plastic crud! If you want to keep your ferrets aural canal clean before grooming and in between its regular bathing, then this is what you needed, a bottle of ear cleaner for Ferrets. After all friends, when was the last time you bathed your ferret? No, come on then, be honest.

Later that most extraordinary day of discovery, I was in the more upmarket discount store called 'Target', shopping for cat food again, (yes, the excitement of my Saturdays are sometimes overwhelming as you can imagine!) when I became strangely concerned. Now don’t get me wrong here in what I am about to say, for as a family we love the companionship of animals, so feeding them is a pleasure for us. However, it was whilst browsing the six aisles dedicated to the care and cosseting of our cats, that I started to get a little uneasy. Six aisles, for goodness sake! One whole aisle at Target, was given over to animal toys, speaking, light flashing, noisy feathery, rubbery chewy animal toys of every description. None of them where cheap either. (Except the small bird toy for cats, that ‘cheap’-ed when it was pressed or was impaled by claws and teeth). The other five aisles at 'Target' that day, were full of pet food and pet medication! So that was six massive aisles, all dedicated to the comfort and happiness of our pets. America is truly an amazing place!

At the turn of this twenty first century, Pam Sigler, Co-liaison of USDA Community Food Security Initiative, said that the USA State of Kentucky alone had 658,000 people living in poverty and 24.9% of those living in poverty were children under the age of 18, and as many as 59,000 Kentucky children were going to bed hungry each night. On top of that, Africa and famine are doing the dance of death upon our silver screens again…again……and again, and now, the whole world is moving into a food shortage situation. Never the less, I suspect in comparison to humans, there are very few pets in Kentucky, in America, in Britain, that go to bed hungry each night?

Now, you will forgive me if this is comparing apples and oranges, but isn’t there something for us here? After all, at the beginning of the 21st century, on our planet, 18,000 children under the age of five died of hunger yesterday. My God! 18,000 children........AND RISING!

Ferrets are no doubt fun and fascinating and sticking one down your pants must be a real thrill, but maybe, just maybe, that bottle of ear-wash, was in fact siphoned from that large lake of hogwash, that our Western society and Western churches keep topped up each day by saying, “We have so much material resources because we are Christians and so God has blessed us, but they, the poor that is, especially the Third World poor, have so little because they are not Christians and God has not blessed them.” I tell you this brother, until the poor are catered for, the Kingdom of God has not fully come. Not even in Kentucky.

God bless you all who practice true religion and long may your example shame the rest of us ‘Ferret fiddlers,’ us ‘Consumer Christians’ into stomach feeding, life saving action.

Listen:-Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. James 1:27

Pray:- Father God, Jehova Jireh, Great provider, give us this day our daily bread and then help us share it with others, in Jesus name we pray, Amen.