If you walk by a long hedge or near a woodpile in Germany or a neighboring country, you may see a gray animal with a long nose poking around in the dirt. This animal is about nine inches long and might weigh half a pound. It is called a hedgehog, and it is looking for worms, snails, insects, snakes or mice—anything to eat. My mother saw one in the early morning, pushing a chicken egg across the yard toward its nest. It had found the egg in the barn, and that was going to be its breakfast.
This little fellow has four small feet under its body that are hard to see, because its body is covered with very sharp spines. If you touch him anywhere, he will immediately roll up into a spiny ball. These sharp spines protect the hedgehog from its enemies.
We children would sometimes touch a hedgehog, and we quickly learned that those spines were sharp! After we touched it, we would watch the hedgehog curl up into a ball, and then we would roll it around, just for fun.
It is interesting to watch a mother hedgehog shuffling around with three or four little ones beside her. She makes her nest under a pile of wood or under a thick hedge.
Hedgehogs have no natural enemies except for the fox. When a fox finds one near a pond, he will roll the hedgehog into the water, where the spiny little animal will eventually drown since they don’t swim. Then the fox will open up the spiny ball and have his dinner.
That makes us sad to think that the little hedgehog loses his life to his enemy, the sly fox. This reminds us that boys and girls and grown-ups who belong to Jesus also have a sly enemy who is waiting to harm them. His name is Satan, or the Bible sometimes calls him “the devil.” He is a lot smarter than a fox, and he’s waiting to catch us when we aren’t on our guard. The Bible warns us in 1 Peter 5:88Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: (1 Peter 5:8) to “be sober [serious], be vigilant [on guard]; because your adversary [enemy] the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” But our God is stronger than Satan, and we can always turn to Him for help: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:11<<To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth.>> God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)).
ML-11/14/2010