CRAB TALES
On Saturday, I went to Dome market to buy food
items. While there, I was assaulted by a variety of sounds and smells. One smell that
dominated was the pungent smell of live crabs heaped up in a large bowl to be
sold. They moved, crawled and heaved as each crab tried to move upwards,
perhaps for some fresh air.
As I walked on, I noticed a movement on the ground
and saw one little crab scuttling along on the ground. It had managed to escape
from the bowl and was now far from the crab seller, gleefully moving to a life
of freedom -or so it thought. As I contemplated using my leg to shift it from
the middle of the road to the side, one of the people who thronged the market
bypassed me, stepped on the crab and moved on, unaware that they had brought
the crab’s world crashing down.
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| source: tpsdave https://pixabay.com/en/crab-beach-sand-macro-closeup-1990198/ |
The crab was hurt but not dead. As I gently pushed
it to the side I learnt a lesson. Like the crab, we are placed in the world
for a purpose. Like the crabs in the bowl, we may have to shove and heave and
fight to get to the top just to get a little relief from the pressures of life.
The crab was put in the bowl to be sold and cooked and eaten. Painful, yes, but
that is its purpose- to glorify God and serve man. This runaway crab thought
that by running away, it would be free. And for a while it was free. Free from the
confinement of the bowl, from the pushing and jostling of other crabs, from the
destiny of being sold, cooked and eaten. But it had left the protection of the
crab seller and exposed and alone, it faced a slow painful death alone, a
badly hurt and crippled crab who no one would want anymore.
In fulfilling our purpose, we have to be bought by
the blood of Jesus and face the heat, pressures and pain of fulfilling our call.
But in the end, we are of benefit to others. We die so that others can live. We
deny ourselves so others can have. We are hungry so others can be full. But in
the end, we glorify God and serve our fellow men.
Like the crab, whether we are bought, sold and
cooked or we run away and are crushed to death, we will still die. Why not die
fulfilling our purpose, however painful, rather than run away and die a painful
and unnecessary death without giving to the world?
Like the prodigal son and like the crab, running
away seems fun, like the way to freedom. But there is a way that seemeth right
unto a man, but the end thereof is death.
Face
the heat, fulfil your purpose.
-
Amesiamina
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