Rev. A.J. Ogden

Years ago I read a story I believe to be true, by a man named Ben Barker. He told of a very strange bird that makes its home in the country of Venezuela. He said these hawk like birds leave their caves each night to feed on many kinds of oily fruit which grows in those vast jungles. Their diet is so very oily that their bodies are full of fat and oil. So they named them oil birds. They are full of oil!

Poor people who didn’t have much money to purchase oil for their lamps would kill these oily birds and extract the oil from their bodies to use in their lamps. So you see, these birds were useful to furnish illumination for darkness, but in their sacrificial death they gave light to a world of darkness.

It all reminds me of how our Lord Jesus Christ came into this spiritually dark world of sin to be our substitute for sin on Calvary’s cross, to give us light. On that cruel cross Jesus suffered the Hell you and I should have suffered so we could have the Heaven we did not deserve! He says to you and me that he has suffered our torment, paid our sin debt, and offers us his blood bought salvation. He bore our sin and darkness so we could enjoy his light of salvation forever!