Enrichment

Some rights reserved by Patricia van CasterenThe apes at the Cleveland zoo get newspapers at meal times. I thought that was odd. Do the younger ones friend each other on Apebook?

I was confused by how interested the primates were in getting deep into the morning edition until I realized that lunch was wrapped in the newspaper tubes. They had to tear the paper apart to get their meal. 

The reason for their frustration was explained by one of the attendants. When the zookeepers hide the food they provide for the animals it isn’t teasing them. According the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo website they are providing them with enrichment which addresses “an animal’s social, psychological and physical needs.” It just looks like teasing. I can’t wait to tell my grown children that all those years I was enriching their lives not teasing them. Well, maybe I can wait.

Teasing isn’t a major focus in the Bible, but tempting (sometimes tranlsated “testing”) might be thought of as extreme teasing. Do you feel teased/tempted/tested by God? Mother Teresa of Calcutta who spent her life working with the poor, said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”

When life gets a little stress-filled, I mean “enriched”, I sometimes think of when I visited a hosptial bound member during a hectic week. We reflected that she would love to be out running around with too much to do…while I would love to just spend the day in bed.

I hope you experience today as enriched by God.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

- 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 

Bible quotation from The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.