Susanne Maynes

Sometimes when I’m looking for a movie to watch, the only thing that fits the bill is a bizarre nature documentary. Not only are they fascinating; they demonstrate how creation teaches spiritual lessons.

There is a very long, shallow lake in Africa that never gets more than a foot deep, and dries up into salty mud puddles when the rainy season ends. Thousands of flamingos return to this lake every year to lay their eggs and raise their young.

Baby flamingos run around in this salty soup until they grow large enough to graduate to the world of the marshes. They are relatively safe on the lake bed, except that sometimes the salt sticks to their legs until it forms a cast. If a little flamingo gets stuck with these casts, she has a hard time keeping up with the flock and escaping predators.

I held my breath, rooting for one baby flamingo whose legs were covered with crust. She tripped and tripped in her desperate efforts to escape the nasty, bald, giant Malibu stork that was about to eat her. Thankfully, it wasn’t a tragic documentary, and she made it.

I am like that baby flamingo. I am born into a world steeped in sin. As I run around in my culture, it sticks to me, and my ability to run is compromised. Along comes the enemy, and I am stork bait.

Hebrews 12 tells us to “…lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…”

Flamingos don’t have a way to break off their salty casts. But in Christ, we are able to get the crusty junk of the world off, to run freely again. We can wash ourselves with the pure water of the Word, and lay our sins at the foot of Jesus’ cross.

What kind of “salt” has been sticking to you lately?

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