Animal School

(Category: Journey Through Faith)

This story is loosely based the following versus:

Mark 6 (NKJV)

30 Then the apostles gathered to Jesus and told Him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught.

31 And He said to them, “Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.

Once upon a Time, the animals decided they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world.  So they organized a school.

They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying.  To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all animals had to take all subjects.

In classes, the duck was excellent at swimming, in fact, better than his instructor.  But he only made a passing grade in flying and was very poor at running.  Since he was so slow in running ha had to drop swimming and stay after school to practice running.

This caused his webbed feet to be worn badly, which made him only average in swimming.  But average was acceptable, so nobody worried about that – except the duck!

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had to do so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down.  He developed charley horses from overexertion, so only got a C in climbing and a D in running.

The eagle was the problem child and was severely disciplined for being a nonconformist.  In climbing classes, he beat all the other to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way to get there...

This story was part of a sermon our pastor used one Sunday.  She went on to ask, “Now, what in heaven’s name is a rabbit doing on a swim team?

“Probably he had been taught he should never say, ‘no’.

“And as we saw, by the time the classes had gone on for a while, because everyone was trying to do everything, no one was doing anything well!

“Because they were forced to say, ‘yes’ to everything, they could no longer do what God created them to do naturally!  Jesus recognized these same feelings in his disciples, the tiredness brought on by too many demands.”

From Mark 6:31; And He said to them, “‘Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”

Note: The above story is accredited to:

Rev.  Maxie Dunnam

Rev.  Maxie D.  Dunnam became the fifth president of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky and served for 14 years.  Dunnam came to Asbury after 12 years of fruitful ministry at the 5,000-member Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.  From 1975–1982, Dunnam was world editor of The Upper Room.  Dunnam is the author of more than 40 books, including the best-selling “Workbook of Living Prayer” (over one million copies sold).  Dunnam presently serves as director of Christ Church Global at Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

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