Waking the Sleeping Lion

I remember watching a documentary once about a family of lions where the male lions would go away for days at a time defending the borders of the pride while the lionesses kept food on the table and the whelps in check.

The hyena’s in the area knew when the males were away coming and harassing the female led pride to the point where blood was drawn in battles with the matriarchs.

The problem for the hyena’s came however when the males returned and caught them red handed inside the territorial lines.

The large male lion of the pride caught and mauled the high ranking hyena to death which sent the rest scurrying for the hills. The male lion was huge and the locals gave him a name Ntwydmala meaning - “he who greets with fire”.

The symbol of the lion is often used in the Bible to describe God and men in particular situations that call for courage, boldness and fierceness. There is a part of man that identifies with the strength and ferocity of a lion along with an admiration of how he is respected by the rest of the animal kingdom.

As men we are called upon to do many things and one of those things is to defend and protect what God has given us. The church is now more than ever in desperate need of men who are like lions and who know how to defend those who cannot be defended and to protect the borders which the world continually encroaches upon.

I’m not talking about becoming more traditional or more liberal but about those things which God created and those things which should never change.

What am I talking about? - Masculinity.

Sometimes I wonder if we as church men have lost what God placed into each of us at our creation. Have we like well fed lions laid down under the shade of the tree and disengaged from church life because it all somehow got too hard?

Maybe we have become like the lion in the Wizard of Oz movie who had no courage. Everyone would agree that this portrayal of the Cowardly Lion was totally out of place and unnatural with what we normally associate with lions – courage, ferociousness and no fear.

Isn’t it just as unnatural to see a church man who does not exhibit characteristics that are normally associated with being male? Maybe we have found church too hard and we have retired to the forest to hide in the shadows like the Cowardly lion.

The church and the world need strong men to step up to the plate, “men who are as true as steel” someone once said.

Is it time to get in touch with our feminine side as the world would have us believe or is it time to return to our roots and become what God has created us to be - masculine.

Danny Bell
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