Letter From Dan Preston
January 17, 2020
Good evening and Happy Sabbath! Last week's memory verse was Mark 6:34 (NKJV), "And Jesus, when He came out, saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep not having a shepherd. So He began to teach them many things." Read below for clues to this week's memory verse!
Nowhere to run
If you live in the Carolinas, you're not stranger to the howl of the coyote. Where we live, they can get quite loud, especially when they're pursuing prey. Unfortunately, I see almost weekly notices in our neighborhood discussion group about people losing small dogs and cats to these packs of coyotes.
Tactics
In doing a little research on this topic, I was surprised to learn about the coyotes eating habits. They are actually omnivores, eating both animals, such as rabbits, snakes and mice, or plants such as grasses and wild flowers. (Makes you wonder why Wile E. Coyote pursued that Roadrunner so hard when he could have just eaten one of those cactuses he was running into. MEEP! MEEP!)
While coyotes often hunt larger animals in packs, they pursue smaller prey by stalking and pouncing on their victim, much like a cat, or it's larger cousin, the lion does. Coyotes have thrived in our area over the years because of a lack of natural predators such as bears, wolves and mountain lions. Since we don't have many of those around here, so the only real threat to coyotes (at least in suburban Charlotte!) are human beings, and the cars we drive.
Our predator
You and I may not have a lot of similarities to the coyote, but there is at least one - we have one main predator. While the coyote's main thread is mankind, mankind's main threat is Satan the Devil!
The prey of the coyote has only one real option - run! As humans, in our fight against Satan, we too must flee him. However, being the predator that he is, he won't give up as easily as a coyote. Instead, we must continually resist him, not just fleeing his influence, but submitting ourselves to God on a daily basis!