If you are going to die, you might as well have a nice view, right?
Have you ever wondered about the mythical creatures that tickle the imaginations of kids of all ages? Did you ever think that unicorns or dragons ever really did exist? Well, let me share with you the reality of a mythical creature of which we have all heard —church mice! Yep, church mice really exist. I’ve seen them in my country ministries and we also have church mice in the urban landscape of Toronto.
The reason we have mice in our building here at Keele is because part of our building goes back to 1890 and it has a solid rock foundation (what else would you expect for a church?). The foundation has been maintained and several of the tiny holes have been plugged with steel wool, but that does not stop the relentless rodents.
Thus we keep traps around the building and make sure we don’t have any food sources to attract them. Still, we have the odd mouse make its presence known. This week, though, has been downright weird. On Monday, I noticed a garbage can by one of the doors. This can had no bag, no food, and no garbage – nothing in it, except a live little squeaker. The can is about two and a half feet tall and I can’t for the life of me figure out how, or why a mouse would expend the effort to jump into it. All that I do know is that once they are within the confines of this can, they can’t get out.
Now, being the man of action that I am, and with a heart of cold steel, I had no problem dealing with the dilemma of the trapped mouse. I sent my son outside with the can in hand and he walked a couple of hundred yards down our back alleyway and released the wretched rodent to the elements. Why else have children if you can’t get them to do your dirty work? Now, wait, I realize the story is interesting as all get out, and I have you eating out of my hand, but it gets better. On Tuesday, as I lumbered into the kitchen to prepare lunch, I just happened to look in the garbage can again and, lo and behold, there was another mouse! I couldn’t believe it! I imagined that John had maybe lacked the heart to banish the mouse to said alley, but at the same time, it didn’t really look like the same mouse. This time I got David and Graham to walk down the street to the parkette and release the creature underneath a tree. This way it could take its last gasps in the beauty of nature. If you are going to die, you might as well have a nice view, right? Well, guess what happened today? Yep, today there was a third mouse in this empty garbage can. I released this one myself. Three days in a row, rodents have expended tremendous skill and energy to get into this empty waste receptacle. Why? What is the attraction? I am trying to reckon this out because I could make millions by building the better mousetrap; I mean three mice in three days, wow!
OK, here’s what I want you to consider: we are much like mice. We have two ears, two eyes, pointy noses and we eat cheese. Actually, these aren’t the similarities to which I was referring. We are like this trio of cheesers because we get ourselves stuck in situations for which there is no escape (at least from our perspective). We have all found ourselves deep in trouble with slippery slopes too steep to climb in our own strength. In other words, we are all powerless to help ourselves and we needed someone with a bigger heart than mine to help us out of the trap of our own making. Praise God that He was willing to help us. Paul, in Romans, puts it this way: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:6-8) Did you catch that? At just the right time, WHEN WE WERE STILL POWERLESS, Christ, through His death, reached into the garbage pail of our lives and lifted us to a warm, safe, place.