That Foolish Cow

The other day my wife and I were driving northward through the Flint Hills of Kansas from Cassoday toward Matfield Green on Highway 177. We have had an abundance of rain this spring. I commented that we would never see the pastures greener than they are right now. She agreed.

As we drove on, we spotted a cow grazing next to the fence. That cow was insane. She was straining to seize mouthfuls of grass through the fence! Behind her, meanwhile, were multiplied acres of the lushest prairie grass anywhere in the nation. But that wasn’t good enough for her. She had to push her boundary, because the grass beyond the fence was obviously superior to the grass behind her!

How much like that foolish cow many of us Americans have become. God has blessed us with more natural resources, more good weather, more food, more freedom, more wealth, than any almost any other nation.

And we understood the source of those blessings. They came from God. We stated in our Declaration of Independence that God and His blessings were self-evident – “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights ....” Since 1789 we taxpayers have paid the salaries of Christian chaplains for the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives. In 1845 we believed in a “manifest destiny ... allotted by Providence.” We printed “In God We Trust” on our coins and our currency. John Jay, one of the framers of our Constitution, and the first Supreme Court Chief Justice, wrote, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” As late as June 14, 1954, President Eisenhower authorized the addition of the words “under God” to our national Pledge of Allegiance.

And yet, turning our back on God and his blessings we have become like that foolish cow, straining to get outside our boundaries. We have excommunicated God and His standards from our science, our public schools, our public buildings, and most of our public discourse (except when abusing His name for emphasis). We look outside our nation for morality, manufacturing, natural resources, food, financing, energy, and the interpretation of our own Constitution.

One begins to wonder if all the problems we are facing, from flooding, to inflation, to soaring energy costs, to dysfunctional homes and education, to high-priced energy, to a sea of public and private red ink, are not somehow connected to our excommunication of the Almighty.

As Isaiah said, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way ....” And then he recited the only known cure, “But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” May God help us to turn around and face Him, and acknowledge Him as the Source of all our blessings and as the Standard by which to exist as individuals and as a nation.