The elephants we see in zoos are usually gentle animals that walk around slowly, and act like somebody who is at peace with the world. Have you ever seen one that was angry and wild?
This elephant lived in Uganda, in East Africa. And was he angry! He was flailing around this way and that way, flapping his enormous ears wildly, and trumpeting so loud that you could hear him from far away. He was acting like he would threaten anyone who came close, starting at you as though he was attacking you. Then he would back off, and start in a different direction.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if this were happening in some remote place, but this was in the middle of the main highway from Kampala to Fort Portal, in Western Uganda. The cars going east had to stop because he acted like he would jump on them if they came closer. And the cars going west had to stop, too, for the same reason. There he was, this enormous elephant taking over the main highway in Uganda. And having a temper tantrum!
The people stopped there said that someone must go and get the game warden. So someone turned his car around and went back to Kampala to tell him. He came in his Land Rover, but there was nothing he could do to calm down this huge beast. Finally, very sorrowfully, as a last resort, he decided he must shoot this strange elephant because he was a threat to everybody. The animal seemed out of its mind.
Can you guess what the problem was? Was he really a rogue animal, a bad one?
No. When the game warden examined him as he lay dead on the grass, he found that he had an abscessed tooth that had been hurting him badly. Probably he had never before had an abscessed tooth in his life. As the people were watching his anger all this time, nobody guessed what his real problem was.
If only some dentist could have helped him (of course, no dentist could do that on an elephant!), then the once angry elephant would have calmed down and been as gentle as any other elephant.
Have you ever seen a person who was very angry, and you were afraid to be near him? Maybe you have thought that person was just a bad person. It’s possible that there was something in his (or her) life that perplexed him, something that had brought him much pain, and he could never understand why God had permitted it to happen to him. The Bible says, “A person becomes an enemy of God when he is controlled by his human nature; for he does not obey God’s law, and in fact, he cannot obey it” (Romans 8:7). Many people can’t understand why they are like they are. And we don’t want to make the mistake of thinking they are hopeless, when in fact if they only could understand the Gospel of God’s love, their “toothache” of heart would be healed.
It’s possible that person was not at heart intending to be a mean or bad person. Let’s not judge someone without knowing why he seems to be so angry.
There was nothing the game warden could have said to the angry elephant to “convert” him, sorry. But if you or I could give some Good News from Jesus to the person whom we don’t understand, it’s very possible that we can bring healing to him. People hurt, just like that elephant hurt. And Jesus is the world’s great physician. A wounded heart can hurt more than an abscessed tooth; what heals is the truth of how much the Lord Jesus loves us and thinks about us.
I doubt that when you grow up you would want to become an animal doctor to try to heal angry but sick elephants; but I do hope that you will choose to learn from Jesus how to heal people who are sick at heart.