There were people concerned about the animal population in Africa. They decided to build a Wildlife Reserve. They erected a fence around it.

Everything that was inside of the fence was considered part of the Wildlife Reserve - the animals, trees and vegetation. Every thing outside of the fence was considered jungle and wild.

In drought they would make sure the animals inside the fence had water. They would feed them in the lean years to preserve them.

They noticed a young male lion always sitting at the fence looking into the jungle. And it was commented that he looked so sad. And everyone wondered why he sat there day after day looking into the jungle. No one knew why he did that.

One day a tree fell on the fence and broke it. All the wild animals rushed onto the Reserve and began to kill and eat all the protected animals.  The young lion ran up to a pride of invading lions to befriend them. They attacked him and would have killed him, but he found a cleft and hid himself.

It took two weeks before order could be restored and the fence repaired. The young lion was nowhere to be found. Finally, he reemerged. He never went back and sat at the fence after that.

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The moral of the story is that the fence was not there to keep the young lion in, but to keep the wild animals out.

The rules that parents come up with are not there to keep you from having fun, or to have you bound, or to make you sad. Parents know what it takes to keep the devil off of you.

It goes back to the things that God will and won’t allow to preserve your life. It was grace that whatever was inside the fence was protected. What was on the inside didn’t choose it. They were chosen by the ones who put up the fence.

It was for their own protection that they were fed, watered and cared for. The wild animals weren’t raised like that. They only knew what their nature taught them, in other words, they were carnal.

And again the moral is that the fence was never there to keep the young lion in, it was there to keep the wild animals out. The young lion didn’t realize that what he had was better than what they had.

Randy Gallop