Life in the Pigpen

This week, a friend of mine is going to wrestle a pig. In some circles, this might be considered perfectly normal, but those usually have something to do with a farm and an eventual meal. Not so in this case. My friend plans to do this for fun. Frankly, I don't understand it, especially because she intends to do this in a mud puddle, a BIG mud puddle.

The pig is bad enough--I've had to catch one before. They are strong and agile and kick like the dickens. They struggle and squeal and run away much faster than you could ever guess their short little legs could carry them. Even so, the mud part baffles me the most. Under controlled circumstances, mud squishing between one's toes can be quite pleasant, but, in order to catch this pig, my friend will accumulate mud in places that mud just should never enter. Nose, eyes, ears, scalp, underarms, and more. She will find new mud in hidden places for days afterward. Yuck.

In order to catch the pig, she will have to get dirty, very dirty. In preparing to do this, however, she made me think about something. In order to catch the pig, she has to go into the pigpen. Once there and covered in mud, she will look a lot like the pig. You did the same thing.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.--John 1:14
...but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.--Philippians 2:7

You had a job to do. Man needed saving, so you became man.

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man.--Romans 8:3

If there is work to do in the pigpen, that's where the workman must go to do it. If men need saving, then the Savior must become a man and get it done. If a pig needs catching, then a woman who wants to catch it must get in there with the pigs.

Thought for today: To what pigpen is God pointing you in order to get your work done?