The Christian and Creation ~ Glorifying the Creator

There were three of us, early that humid September morning, sharing in the spectacle of life and death, animal survival and human dominion.  A chestnut Thoroughbred mare, a tiny, drowning gray mouse, and me.

I walked into the barn that morning, halter slung over my shoulder and grooming tote in hand, and a stirring motion in the mare’s water bucket caught my eye.  I gasped when I saw the tiny tip of a tiny mouse nose barely above the water.   Tail straight down, little body paddling vainly, the creature was pathetically and frantically twirling in circles.  The sides of the bucket were slick and straight, and the edge was six inches above him.  He had probably fallen in from the rafters, and now, struggling furiously, he was completely unable to save himself, condemned to drown in the bottom of a bucket.

But then I had walked in.  I ran immediately ran for a grain scoop and scooped the little creature out.  To some this may sound inexplicable, but I was so relieved that he was okay that I was beaming like a child who has just made his parents very proud.  The mouse huddled in the back of the scoop, a soaking wet, scrawny little varmint – worthless dead or alive, this whole drama really meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things.  Or so most would say.

There we were: a Thoroughbred mare, valuable on the market, beautiful in the eyes of the world, a little gray mouse, worthless, or perhaps worth more dead, and me, in the image of God, given responsibility and dominion over both.  My choice to determine both their fates.

I looked at the horse, tall, sleek, regal.  I looked at the mouse, tiny, fragile, soaked.  The horse invoked images of galloping through green fields, of the splendor of racehorses, and of kings on parade.  Of course she deserved my attention, my care, my time.  The mouse made me think of a hole chewed in my leather riding gloves, feces on the barn floor, and The Plague.

Given that history, I should have let him drown.

But  from the second I saw him, I simply could not.  Every force in my heart told me to pull him out of the bucket.  There was no other way.  Why?  Why save a mouse?  Why did there exist such inner compulsion to save a tiny little life?  The life of a mouse who might chew up something else in the tack room, and, even in the best scenario, is now easy prey for the barn cats?  Why did my heart despair to see his struggle, then leap joyfulfully to see him shake himself off and peer up at me?

I let him loose in the woods at the edge of the property and he ran off into the grass and bushes.

Because, I thought, that is mercy.  And I have known great mercy from God.

Because, I thought, that mouse belongs to God.  And I am in the image of God.