Sacred Cows

Tiny Treasures Cow Mosaic - Moooo!

A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

My favorite cow story is found in 1 Samuel 6. The Philistines aka the bad guys have taken the ark of the covenant in battle. But it is causing them nothing but problems. Their statues of their Gods keep falling down in front of it. The people are sick and getting nasty tumors.   Some one has the bright idea of "lets send it back to Israel" but.... how?

1 Samuel 6: tells us what they did.
⁷ “Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. ⁸ Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, ⁹ but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us and that it happened to us by chance.”

They have to make sure it is really the God of Israel that is causing them all these troubles. It could be just a coincidence. I'm not a farmer girl by any stretch of the imagination, but I know that mommy cows are going to go strait for their babies that are pinned up in the barn. In this story they did not do that they headed for Israel territory. ¹² "Then the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. "
 I love how it says in this verse that the cows went lowing all the way. They were not happy about leaving their babies and going on a road trip to Israel.  


So why am I writing about cows? Its is my guitar student, Trenton's fault. He was looking at my mosaic tiny treasures pins and he asks me "Can you make a brown cow, my aunt likes cows." I did not expect to get it done so quickly but I sat down to think about it and ta da we have a rolly polly cow.  


I think I am too tired tonight to come up with anything terribly profound.  Because I'm going to go to bed and write in the morning. (Changed my mind)

I am reminded by some great books my kids and I used to love reading together by Denys Cazet. They were called the Minnie and Moo series about two cows that we constantly doing crazy things that cows should not do. I think one of my favorites in the series was Minnie & Moo and the Potato From Planet X. It says in one biography about Mr. Cazet how he came upon the idea of writing about cows.
"He was inspired to tell stories about the silly cow best-friends when he passed a herd of cows in which all but two were facing the same way. The other two stood next to each other, facing in the opposite direction from the rest of the cows. He immediately dubbed the two nonconformists Minnie and Moo and imagined the adventures two cows who were loyal friends rather than followers of the herd."

I guess inspiration comes from funny places. Sometimes it is something that some one says that sends me spinning with an idea for a new post. We have termed those silly things that happen or would make good examples as "Blog Fodder" I have even heard it said in my household "watch out or you'll be Blog Fodder." I suppose that is always a risk one takes in my little corner of the universe.

Anyway I think my point today is that some days its just ok to do what you do. Its not like you have to hit every ball out of the ball park for the game to be a good one. Sometimes life is just kind of normal and ordinary and the stuff we have to do is just every day things.
I came across this quote by Mother Teresa that I had written down in one of my note books. It says, " Many people want to do big things, she explained. No one wants to do the small things - writing a letter for a blind man, washing someone's dirty clothes, cleans someone's tiny house." It made me think, maybe you are waiting for some great opportunity to serve the Lord in some astounding way. I guess I would agree with mother Teresa theres a lot of small stuff that needs done that can make a big difference in the lives of those who are touched by a small act of kindness.

Ok - thats as profound as I can manage - I'm going to bed.

Prayer
I pray the Lord will bless you and help you to see the little things that need done all around you. That you will have a heart to be about those things. Help us to be faithful in the small stuff, and in your time give us bigger things to do.