God gave us....

God gave us dogs. We call them "man's best friend." Why? Because they are usually loyal (I'm picturing a Golden Retriever or Black Lab). You can punish a dog, and it will tuck its tail and lower its head, whimper and hide. But the tail doesn't lie, and before long the dog will still be able to come back wagging its tail and ready to play. They learn. They salivated for Pavlov, and they learn obedience best when they are young. They are loyal friends if they are not mistreated. God gave us dogs to teach us about loyalty. His loyalty.

God gave us horses. They teach us about the noble use of strength under direction. His noble strength and direction.

God gave us storks. They don't make good pets, but who cares? I think He gave them to us for another reason. I have recently learned that storks are some of the most caring animals for their own. These birds of the same feather really do flock together, but not like ignorant birds like chickens. Storks nurture each other and support each other - not just their young, but their own old ones too. When an old stork can't flap his wings as fast and keep up with the others, the other storks fly along side or under him, and help to hold him up. What better animal to deliver babies? There is a Greek word for love that I never heard of before, or at least don't remember hearing until recently. You may have heard of agape, phileo, and eros. Maybe you have, but then again, maybe not. Regardless of that, have you ever heard of storge? It is the kind of love love demonstrated by the stork. I never heard of it before, so it's a new word to me. No, I didn't coin it like "euphorrhythmia." God gave us storks to teach us about storge love. His storge love.

I would say He gave us guppies to teach us about agape love, but that's a bit of a stretch, and I don't know how to pull that one together. They just rhyme in English. Almost. Maybe it's like this: guppies... no matter how you look at them, you can't help but love 'em! How is that for unconditional love? Eh... scratch that one from the list.

God gave us all of these other animals too. Maybe what I'll do is try to learn why he gave us those, and just maybe I'll learn a few more things about God.

At the beginning of my college studies, in the fall of 2004 when I was a part-time community college student, I resolved to keep all of my math, science, and nursing textbooks for future review. My idea was that some day I'm going to sit down and go over all of them again, relearn whatever I had become rusty on, and reinforce whatever I needed most. I sold most of the textbooks that weren't from math, science, or nursing classes, but did keep a few others.

I remember my first few semesters, I nearly mastered all of the content in my books, or at least whatever we went over in class. I had an algebra class during my first semester at Reading Area Community College (RACC), and the instructor was very good at teaching it. Till the end of the semester, I could do just about any problem in the book with few exceptions and a reasonably low error rate. Fast forward a few years. I got burnt out as a student. Somewhere in the barrage of learning, I lost the motive to process and retain new things. I still have my stack of textbooks, and it has grown large enough to cover the top of my dresser, plus part of a book shelf, but there are few that I have mastered. My idea of mastering a subject is not necessarily getting an "A" in the class, but understanding the content well enough that upon completion you can turn around and safely teach it to another student, and also find the errors in a textbook. Yes, even textbooks have errors. They are limited to human understanding. Somewhere, in the time from the fall of 2004 till the fall of 2008, I got burnt out as a student, and wasn't really mastering any content anymore. I got in over my head, and didn't really care about what I learned or didn't learn.

That stack of books has gotten pretty big, and it's going to take a long time to go back over them. There's a lot of things that I didn't even study, and wasn't even included in some of the classes, but could be very useful in practice. If I actually stick to my resolve, it will take a long time to go back over those texts. In reality, it probably won't happen. I might refer to them ocassionally, but will probably never master all of that content. It's just simply too much. It would take years to master it all, and till then there would be a lot of new research that would outdate many of this current knowledge. A better aproach would be to try to stay aware of new research, but that is a pain because it's not as readily available or consolidated as big thick textbooks recommended by professors.

There's one Book that is better than any textbook. It is much indefinitely reliable, doesn't change every few years, it remains consolidated, is not based on mere human understanding, and doesn't leave one dissapointed. I will never master it, but will do better to learn to become subject to the things it teaches. It is flawless, and I haven't found errors in it to send back to the Author, simply because there are no errors. I am not the Authority on this Book, so it is not my position to teach it as if it had mastered it. Rather, my resolve would be better to encourage others to become students of thi s Book. The Master Teacher taught and demonstrated it to His students and left them in either wonder and amazement, or else frustration (Mark 6:1-6,) depending on whether their hearts where right. He corrected their errors (Matthew 7:9-13, & John 19:30), and left us with enough to keep us angaged in learning and living for more than the span of any man's lifetime (John 4:5-24). It never turns dry, like a textbook on nurse theorists.