The Ox

 Where there are no Oxen the manger is empty. But from the strength of an Ox comes an abundant harvest...

Proverbs 14:4

Jimmy Stewart told John Wayne in The Shootist, and I have said it before, even an Ox dies.  

I don't wanna be a bummer; abundant harvest or not, it has a manger life.  We all have an expiration date.  

Don't waste your strength on anything other than your harvest.  Figure out what your harvest is and work it.  As crazy as it may seem its a call to action.  You don't think of action when you envision an ox.  They're big and dumb, and they move slowly.  They need constant poking and prodding from their master to do everything the right way, or they stop. But they're strong, and given the right direction, they perform work in abundance. 

Gee, that sounds a lot like me.

After some repetition, even the ox knows where to go with no prodding because he knows it's painful to leave the path his master has directed him on.  

How foolish are we to not be like that ox that knows its master?  

He keeps walking without being prodded because he knows if he stops, the master is there with that stick; it's blind faith demonstrated by a dumb animal.  

Lucky for us, God doesn't use a stick to persuade you, but even the ox knows better than to stray from the road.   Isaiah 1:3   

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  Thats why we need oxen.  With an abundant harvest, an ox might come in handy.  You could be worse things, but I wanna be an Ox, they're force multipliers, and it's better than being an ass, they can be super mean.  They're in the bible too.   One of them even spoke to a person in the book of Numbers to tell them how stupid they were.  I know all this stuff from years of reading what the state of California labeled as my little book of hate speech, The Bible.       

If I'm gonna become an ox, I'd better start working out more....