It’s April so you probably aren’t expecting a post about Advent. But in recent months I’ve begun brainstorming about a daily Advent devotional for later this year. And it began with a story about an angry bull.
Last year I found out that July 12 is National Cow Appreciation Day. And no, I don’t really know what that means either. Do we shout, “Hey, thanks for the milk in my cereal this morning!” when we see cows in a pasture?
Whatever, National Cow Appreciation Day reminded me of a story. The memory made me laugh. It seemed like others would enjoy the story, and it only took about 250 words to tell (a one-minute read). I wrote the story, then realized … it actually makes a fun, untraditional, wildly inappropriate devotional. I wish more devotionals were like that.
Huh. There’s an idea. An edgy, junkyard-ish devotional that only takes a minute to read. That could be … fun.
Now I’m not a professional writer so putting 365 of these together would take forever. But hey, I could do some for Advent, right? And that’s months away!
And thus I sold myself on another goofy idea. I’m hoping a few million people will sign up. Mostly likely it will be just a dozen. Maybe less. More on that another time. I’ll give you a chance to join this amazing junkyard Advent devotional movement later this year.
For now I’ll share the story that got the thing rolling. Warning: if you are squeamish you might want to skip this one.
My father loved our family ranch. He kept cattle on the property and enjoyed working them. As he aged he needed more help, but he still put on his boots and stepped into the corral to herd the cattle into pens.
Dad was 80-years old when a young bull didn’t like the situation and charged. The bull knocked Dad to the ground and, long story short, the bull broke Dad’s neck. Dad spent months in one of those horrible halos.
And the bull?
He became a steer.
And then we ate him.
So, why is this story in a daily devotional?
Because it reminds me of all those sacrificed animals in the Old Testament. There is a certain primal nature to it all. It’s bloody, gory, gruesome, and somehow annoys our sanitized modern sensibilities about life. We want to whitewash it all and not really think about it. There’s a grittiness that reminds me of the junkyard.
But then I remember that our spiritual journey is also sometimes bloody and gruesome. Sometimes metaphorically. Sometimes in actual fact. There are broken necks that cause us to respond by wanting to cut off someones … um, never mind.
A spiritual journey is messy. In the midst of joy we find pain. In the midst of hope we sometimes experience despair. In the midst of clarity, confusion. And sometimes in the ashes and smoke of it all we find redemption.