Mother Seal

I remember once, a long time ago, watching the seals in Central Park in New York City.  There were a whole lot of them, but I was watching two in particular, a mamma seal and a baby seal that was learning how to swim.  The mamma seal was reclining on a rock close to the water, and the baby seal was in the water, fluttering about because it really could hardly swim at all–it was very small.  So it tried to get out of the water, back on the rocks.  But as soon as it was back on the rocks, the mamma seal pushed it back into the water again.  And again it tried to swim, and again it fluttered and clambered back on the rocks.  And again the mamma seal pushed it back into the water.  This happened three or four times, until at last the baby seal seemed so exhausted that it seemed it was going to drown.  And just then the mamma seal, with a quick movement, as fast as lightning, grabbed her baby and put him safe and sound with her on the rocks.  And I remember thinking how that was a perfect picture of how Jesus teaches us–where did the instinct of the mamma seal come from, if not from Him–and how He too seems, apparently, to be abandoning us, and then, after we have had the necessary experience in exercising hope and our own free will, when we feel at the point of giving up because it seems too much for us, then He too, like the mamma seal, grabs us and brings us to Himself where we feel happy and secure.  But the truth is He had never left us a single moment, just like the eyes of the mamma seal never left her baby for a single moment.

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