For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a huge animal lover. Most of the time it’s a blessing. While other times it is not so much. Those of you who have been to Africa will know, loving animals is not quite so much a blessing here. The people treat their animals as….well…. animals. Which is doable until it gets to the point where it’s literally beating their animals.
This is what I encountered the other day. We were traveling back from ministry in Manzini and we saw this man beating his dog. I’ve never seen it to this extent though. I’ve seen people beat their dogs and mistreat them, but never have I seen it like this. Never. I can still hear the sounds the dog was making as this guy was whipping him with a huge stick…
It broke my heart. Literally. I wanted to go whip him with his stick and ask him how that felt. I know, very christian, but it’s the truth. And afterwards I was just raving to God asking how a person would ever think that beating a dog, or a person, or anything for that matter, would even be okay. It then led me to thinking about people who literally beat their kids like that. And I just can’t understand how people can be that cruel and mean. They must have no heart.
Then I just heard this soft voice inside my head saying, “Don’t hate them for it. It’s not them, it’s the evil inside them”And it just made me stop and I realized that’s so right.
It’s not them.
It’s Satan, the evil inside of them. Just as my sins don’t make me who I am today, evil is not that person. They can be consumed by evil, be mean and cold-hearted, but underneath the devil’s schemes and cloaks, are God’s children. And these children have this empty spot that will never be filled without God.
It just made me rethink the fact that yes, I don’t hate the person. I hate Satan. I hate the control he has over me, my friends and vfamily and that guy on the street beating his dog. And I need to just look past the evil and the hurt and the pain and the bitterness to the person inside that God made them to be. That’s when you finally begin to understand the person.
That’s when you finally begin to see them through God’s eyes.
1 John 3:1:
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
