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The Elephant Story. 

Several years ago, in an African Nature Reserve, the elephant population was getting out of hand.  Without thinking about the affects of their decision, the people who were running the reserve decided to keep all of the young elephants, and sold off the older ones. 

At first, the effects were barely noticeable.  The group of young elephants formed their own mini-herd and grew up through their childhood years at a normal pace.  However, when the elephants began entering into their adolescent years, they started exhibiting some very strange behaviors. 

You see, elephants develop more slowly than humans and reach “adolescence” when they are in their 20s.  As with human adolescence, the elephants’ bodies go through significant changes and their hormones are at crazy levels.  During this time, elephants go into a period called “musking.”  This is where the elephants, particularly the males, test their strength against one another, and exhibit more violent behavior than usual.  A typical show of musking is when a developing male will rub his tusks against trees and stamp around in the dust. 

But with our orphaned elephants, their period of musking revealed the real effects of their parental abandonment.  They started musking like normal, but then it didn’t stop.  Instead of the the typical 6 months or so, this phase of musking continued on for years.   Their behavior became increasingly more violent as time went on, the herd developed a distinct pecking order based on physical domination, and the reserve workers even began to describe the herd as a “gang.”  The violence progressed to the point where the gang leader “Goliath” even speared a rhino, and eventually had to be put to sleep. 

It was like they didn’t know what to do…like they didn’t know how to act like elephants.  The reserve workers were at their wits’ end as to what to do.  Finally, they decided to bring in some old elephants to see if that would work.
 

The results were incredible. 

The old elephants, who were still much larger than the musking adolescents, did not try to put down their threats by force.  When challenged, they just looked at them like “what are you doing?  That’s not the way an elephant acts!  We elephants don’t use our amazing strength to dominate each other and pick on the weak and frail.  We use our strength to protect the herd! We protect those who cannot protect themselves.”
 

After a few weeks, the herd had become a herd again.  The young elephants simply followed the model provided by the older elephants and found their place within the now peaceful elephant community.

How many of our prisons, I wonder, are full of still-musking adolescents who never had a positive father figure in their lives?  We marvel at how violent and lost this upcoming generation seems to be, and yet we many times do not compute that they are the most fatherless generation to ever be on the planet.  Divorce and dead-beat dads are the norm instead of the exception.  Abuse is typical.  Neglect is normal.  A loving husband and father is about as common these days as a needle in a haystack. 

James 1:27 says that “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

What is your religion?  How good of a job is your church doing at looking after the orphans and the widows?  The fatherless are crying out.  Adoption is the answer.  The question is, will we hear their cries?  Will we answer the call?