God Loves Cows.

Have you ever ended a story with a question?  I think that means the storyteller is looking for a reaction from the audience.  Maybe it's even an invitation into the story.  I've been thinking about a story that ends that way about a missionary who only went a third of the way that God told him to go.

This guy was called by God (as in God actually talked to him) to go to a city on "the other side of the world" to tell them that God loves them and wanted to save them from the destruction they were facing.  The only problem being that this guy's nation was practically a sworn enemy with this people group, and so he wasn't too excited to go.  Once he finally got there, he showed up, did only one day of travel instead of the 3 that God asked him to do in order to reach everybody, and then sulked in the desert outside the city while they all converted.  Yes, he was so opposed to these guys that he got mad that they didn't die.

Then God asks the question which ends the story: "...Ninevah has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

Maybe the biggest point in this story is about God's compassion, especially in comparison to Jonah's ethnocentric bad attitude.  But I also think it's about cows.

A while ago, I was reading in the local newspaper about the evacuation of the area around an erupting volcano here in Costa Rica: Turrialba.  The story mentioned that about 300 cows were also being evacuated (photo left).  Of course the reason for this was that livestock are the livelihood of many people living in that rural community.  So evacuating people but letting the families' incomes be destroyed made no sense.

Caring about what the people you love care about is natural.  At least it seems like it would be.  But we sometimes get caught up in the theological chicken-or-the-egg question: Do we meet people's needs or tell them about Jesus?  A friend reminded me this week of one of my favorite St. Francis of Assisi quotes: "Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."

A bunch of Quechua Bible translators also reminded me of this when we were writing out their plans for the next 5 years and they reminded me that as well as finishing the Old Testament translation, they wanted to help reduce the percentage of the kids in their state who were dying before they were 5 years old (at that point it was about 40%).

God loves cows because they are life sustaining to the people He loves (and there's nothing better than fresh cow's milk, let me tell you).  One of my prayers is that I'll have that same all-encompassing love for the people He puts in my life.

(Continuing on the cow theme, here's a photo of me gesturing wildly at a small herd of cows outside Coronado, Costa Rica.  I have a thing for cows, after falling in love in Peru with Shumaq, the nicest dairy cow you'll ever meet.)