Published by Few weeks ago, my husband was discouraged with a certain individual he was trying to reach out to. He was a bit intimidated by the person and thought he was not doing good enough to make the person seeking the truth of God. So I told him this parable about bats…
There is a colony of bats living in a certain cave deep within the rainforest of Borneo. At daytime they would roost upside down while waiting for the darkness to fall. As the evening approaches, millions of them would fly out of the cave looking for fruits or plants to feed upon. They target bananas, mangoes, durians, dates and figs. To the naked eyes, they are just feeding. They look very ugly, weird mousy faces creatures that hang upside down while roosting. Ignorant human beings thought they defecate and urinate on their faces. And…ugh…the males lactate too! How weird!
But no matter how ugly and revolting they seem to be, these bats play an important role to the fruit crops and the rainforest. You see, as they feed, the fruits or plants’ seeds would stick to their ugly feet and as they fly they would disperse these seeds hence assisting in pollination. The bats do not know this. They just going through the motion of living, feeding, breeding, being feed upon, dying etc. By their simple act of feeding and dispersing the seeds, they help to maintain the forest diversity and restore deforested areas. Without the bats, the forest would cease to exist. Without the forest, the animals would disappear too.
Sometimes, the only way we could lead a person to Christ is by showing them good examples instead of preaching the gospel directly to their faces. People are not attracted to our message if we lead a life that does not reflect our faith. For example, we always come late to work. Though coming late to work is a common practice to some people, we are actually robbing our employers of the time which we suppose to spend do ing our work. If we compromised in our beliefs, our evangelism is meaningless and we are just hypocrites, paying lip service to God.
Let us all resolve to examine our conduct in every situations because our actions could be the only ‘Bible’ that others ever read. Just like the ignorant bats, we never know when the seeds of truth will ever be sown in the hearts of those we come in contact with.
