Like a Toad

I was out on my usual morning walk when a slight movement on the sidewalk caught my attention. Looking closer, I saw it was a toad. The ones I had seen before were mostly fat, slimy looking, and potbellied, with protruding eyes reminiscent of the frog prince of fairy tales. This one was emaciated and dehydrated, with a rather deflated belly, weakly hopping along the cement sidewalk with no sign of water or vegetation in sight.

Feeling sorry for the poor animal’s plight and pushing aside the many stories I had read about poisonous frogs, I attempted to nudge the pathetic little bundle into a small bag I always carry with the intention of looking for a verdant patch into which to release it. To my consternation, the more I tried to “save it,” the more it tried to hop frantically away from my efforts, probably seeing me more as a predator than a help.

My thoughts went to our own frequent reactions along the sidewalk of life. We often become emotionally and spiritually emaciated, weakly plodding along with no sure sight of verdant pastures for repose and failing to see the Lord’s outstretched hand of help. We struggle like the toad against the very One who desires more than anything to save us. “He who took humanity upon Himself knows how to sympathize with the sufferings of humanity. Not only does Christ know every soul, and the peculiar needs and trials of that soul, but He knows all the circumstances that chafe and perplex the spirit. His hand is outstretched in pitying tenderness to every suffering child. Those who suffer most have most of His sympathy and pity.

He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and He desires us to lay our perplexities and troubles at His feet and leave them there.”* Dear friends, whatever you are struggling with, hear the words of the Master: “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB).

Jessy Quilindo

* Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press®, 1942), 249.