Bears

Dear Boys and Girls,

What do you think of when you hear the word bear? Do you think they look cute although you wouldn’t want to meet one in the wild? Do you think they are a prey to hunt or a predator to be avoided? Perhaps you can’t put your garbage out until the hour the garbage truck is expected because bears like to knock over the cans and drag away the bags, so you think they are a nuisance. Perhaps you have seen bears in a zoo, and they made you laugh.

This spring, something about bears struck me. The young bear that climbed the bird feeder pole at someone’s house was rather cute and funny, but the bear that came to our chicken coop was not. He was hungry, and he was powerful. We thought the coop had been built to withstand all predators. Nothing had been able to get in so far, but the bear simply pushed his way into the run one night and waited for a chicken to come out of the coop. A week later, he came back, and since we had secured the run, he decided to simply take the whole door off the coop. We were no match for the bear’s power.

It reminded me of something. The coop is perhaps much like our heart. Perhaps we are quite convinced that sin is wrong, and we want to do what is right. However, what happens when we meet with temptation? What happens when your friend asks you to look at something on his phone that is wrong?

What happens when you know you ought to get up immediately and listen to your mother, but the book you are reading is so hard to put down? What happens when the answers for the spelling test are still up on the whiteboard, and the teacher hasn’t noticed? What happens when your brother has been annoying you all morning, and no one will see you knock him over? Are you honest and kind, and do you turn away from wrong things? Perhaps you try. You try very hard, but you try on your own. You think you are able to stand against wrong things. Perhaps you have an older brother or sister who thinks the same thing. “Mom, I don’t need a block on my phone! I don’t do anything wrong! “or “Dad, why don’t you trust me? I would never go on that!”

What is the problem here? Well, just like the chicken coop was strong, we think we can withstand sin on our own without help. We don’t realize how strong and powerful sin is. We don’t realize how quickly it can overcome us. Most of all, we don’t know our own heart. Our heart is not only weak, but it is INCLINED to evil; it is DRAWN to sin. We often let sin into a wide-open door, and if we say “no,” soon sin overcomes us so that we do it anyway. Instead of trusting ourselves and asking others to trust us, we ought to bow our knees. “Lord, I am just like the Bible says in Proverbs, my ‘feet run to evil.’ I cannot do right, and my heart is so sinful that it would rather do what is wrong. I am ‘evil, born in sin,’ and I grieve Thee every day. Lord, wilt Thou keep me from sin? Wilt Thou give me a new heart? Wilt Thou please ‘deliver me from evil’?”

We are no match for our own heart. A bear can be tamed if it lives in a zoo, but it is impossible to tame our heart. However, what is impossible with us, is possible with God. Manasseh was a very wicked man, yet the Lord tamed him by giving him a new heart that desired to turn from evil and turn to God.

We read of bears in the Bible. We read of a mother bear (Proverbs 17), a bear lying in wait (Lamentations 3), a grazing bear (Isaiah 11), a rushing bear (Proverbs 28), and a bear killed by a man (1 Samuel 17). Two bears killed the children who mocked Elisha. This is a lesson, boys and girls. God not only sees what grown-ups do; He sees what children do, too. It matters how children behave. When they do wrong, the Lord is displeased.

Ask the Lord for a new heart. Ask Him every day to keep you from sin. When the Lord works in a person’s heart, he will try to do what is right not because he fears punishment but because he does not want to grieve the Lord.

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