Just as the sun was beginning to rise, a man was driving his car down a street in Ephrata, Washington. In the dim morning light, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a brown blur moving very fast. When he turned to look closer, he saw a long tail and a faint shape in the early morning darkness. Then the shape quickly disappeared into some dark shadows. He had a hunch it was a cougar. He wasn’t sure. He had never heard of a cougar being sighted inside the city limits before.
He thought about it and decided the safe thing to do was call
the police.
“I saw a shape running through town. I have a hunch it was a mountain lion,” he told them.
The shape he saw really was a mountain lion (another name for a cougar). Some hunches we have are true. Have you ever had a hunch about God? Have you ever had the hunch that a greater power than yourself was looking out after you? Or a hunch that this world didn’t create itself? Or the hunch that if we leave God out of our lives we are missing something terribly important? Or the hunch that God loves you and wants to be part of your life?
If you have ever had any of these hunches, you can find out if they are true by praying to God and asking Him to make Himself known to you. God delights to answer such prayers. He wants us to have more than just a hunch He exists. He wants us to come to know Him and love Him with all our hearts. The Bible is the book where He has revealed Himself fully. He can help you understand it, if you ask Him to.
The cougar wasn’t spotted again until 9:30 that morning. Another man in a small black sedan was driving down an alley when the big cat jumped out of some bushes into the middle of the alley in front of him. The cat was nine feet long from the tip of his nose to the black tip of his tail. He was sleek, athletic and agile. The driver of the car took out his cell phone and started recording a video of the big cat. When he drove closer the cat got spooked and turned and started running down the middle of the alley to get away. The driver sped up to keep up with the cat.
A cougar can move amazingly fast, but not as fast as a car. He just wanted to get away. In the forest he was the one who did the chasing, but now he was the one being chased.
To escape from the black sedan, the cougar abruptly turned to the side and leaped over a five-foot-high wooden fence with some bushes on the other side and into somebody’s backyard.
This driver reported the address of the house where he had seen the cougar jump the fence. Fish and Wildlife officers were sent to the scene. When they got there, they walked through backyards searching for the animal, knowing the cougar could be hiding behind any bush.
The cougar did his best to get away from them. He ran from backyard to backyard. He desperately wanted a place to hide. In the forest he had many places to hide, but in a town with homes where people lived, he didn’t know where to go. Then he saw a screen door at the back of a house. That house might be a good place to hide. With a swipe of his claws, he ripped open the screen on the backdoor and entered the house.
The man who lived alone at the house came out of his bedroom to investigate the noise. He was shocked when he saw the 180-pound feline in his living room. He slipped out the front door and closed it behind him.
Fortunately, the Fish and Wildlife officers were searching nearby. Minutes later, two officers entered the house. Both of them carried rifles equipped to shoot tranquilizer darts. The animal was spooked from hiding behind a couch and tried to get away by running into the kitchen. An officer raised his rifle to his shoulder and shot the big cat in the hip with a tranquilizer dart.
One tranquilizer dart was not enough to stop the big cat. He saw the window over the kitchen sink and thought that was his path to freedom. He jumped up to make his escape, clawing at the glass to break it open. But the other officer fired his rifle and another tranquilizer dart hit the animal. The second tranquilizer dropped the cat in his tracks and he fell into the kitchen sink as if he had gone to sleep there.
The officers saw he was a big, healthy, male mountain lion.
Working together, they picked the mountain lion up and carried it to the back of their truck and placed it in a strong crate, locking it in.
When the effects of the drug wore off, the cougar found himself in the back of a pickup truck, bouncing over a bumpy mountain road. The Fish and Wildlife officers drove a couple of hours up this road.
When they got to a remote spot, they stopped and opened the gate to the crate so the mountain lion could jump out. As the cougar jumped from the crate to the ground, the two officers fired their pistols into the air and shouted. The loud shots and the yelling scared the cat, and it ran off as fast as it could. The officers didn’t want the cat to think it could be comfortable around people. They wanted to scare the big cat off so it would never come near men or where they lived again.
The officers later said the cougar had wandered into town and then probably became disoriented and didn’t know which way to go to get out. “Disoriented” is a big word and simply means the cat lost his way.
The Bible says, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23)). Because of sin, we have all become disoriented, just like that cougar. We run away from God instead of running to Him. We think we can hide from Him when His eyes are in every place. We think sin can make us happy when all it does is make us miserable.
To save us from our sins, God, the Father, sent His Son into the world. On the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ suffered, bled and died so that sinners may have a way to return to God. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)).
“Christ died for our sins” are five of the most beautiful words ever spoken (1 Corinthians 15:33For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; (1 Corinthians 15:3)). Because He died, sinners who deserve death and punishment may go free and find the forgiveness of sins and a new life in Him.
Messages of God’s Love 11/7/2021