Polar Bears.

This weekend was a bridal shower in Minneapolis for one of my besties (the bride is in the middle)!

College besties.

 I zipped into the cities on Friday, had some catch-up time with a friend,

 (this is at Café Latte in St. Paul. Don’t ever let anyone tell you Café Latte is something more than a glamorous cafeteria, because it’s not. It’s a glamorous cafeteria. There are even food trays. I mean, “what do they think we are, dumb or something?” {Name that movie} They do, however, have really GLAMOROUS food. Like this salted caramel tres leche cake.), then I hopped over to another friends where I spent the rest of the evening with her and her hubby.

Love them!!

Woke up at their house to my first cup of French-press coffee and this guy:

 Part fox, part dog. Only half tamed. And I like him a lot.

 And speaking of tamed animals. Yesterday, before I left the cities, I met up with another friend and we went to the zoo. Now, I have never been one much for zoos. We never really went when I was a kid and I have only gone twice in my adult life before yesterday. I don’t know, they just don’t do it for me usually. I kind of think, “If I want to see a lion, I will go to Africa. What’s the big deal?”

My sentiments were much the same yesterday.

All the animals just seem a little….bored.

I mean, check out this orangutan:

Non-plussed. Being stared at like he is some kind of freak show.

 And look at these mammoths.

Polar bears. One of the deadliest creatures on earth.

But wait a second? Is that polar bear playing with….what is that…..is that a plastic pickle?!?!

 Kind of out of place, isn’t it?

Trust me, I think they realize that those white garbage cans in the background are not blocks of ice that just fell off an iceberg.

As I was watching them, 5 inches away from my face, separated only by a thick piece of glass, all I could think was, “This is not their home. And they absolutely know it.”
I couldn’t help but think these things again and again as I watched a tiger lying on the grass, all the trees around him fenced off so he couldn’t climb them. Or when those giraffes were licking the side of the building, because there just wasn’t a whole lot else going on.

The seals seemed perfectly fine, loving to entertain the masses. Happy as clams.

 But the penguins also knew that, even though there was a mural behind them of Antarctica, this was no Antarctica.

As my brain kept running, I immediately thought, “This earth isn’t really my home either, is it? But which am I like, the polar bears and penguins, or the seals?”

I say it in my head, I hear it in church, and I read it in my Bible, “This is not my home,” but, if I am being honest, I think I really feel like the seals do. Most of the time I think earth is just peachy, the cat’s meow, my stage to entertain….my home.  This is where I am comfortable. I am comfortable in glamorous cafeterias and drinking French press and going to bridal showers.

But the issue is….I don’t really WANT to be like the seals. I don't want to be duped into thinking that this little pool of a world is the ocean, you know? I want to be like the polar bears and the terribly bored orangutans: always aware that the mural painted on the wall is just an image, not the real thing, and constantly knowing that, because of Jesus, this earth and this life, is not it!

We were created for bigger forests, wolfies. Don't get too comfortable.